Georgia gun laws are the culprit behind this year’s Music Midtown cancellation.
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The annual festival, started in 1994, takes place in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park. This year’s event was slated to take place in September before Live Nation announced early this morning that they were forced to cancel the 2-day event.
“Due to circumstances beyond our control, Music Midtown will no longer be taking place this year. We are looking forward to reuniting in September and hope we can get back to enjoying the festival together again soon,” the organizers said in a statement.
The statement continued, “Refunds will be processed automatically within the next 24 hours to the original method of payment. Please allow 7-10 business days for the refund to be processed by your bank. For any questions related to refunds, please visit contact.frontgatetickets.com.”
Though Live Nation did not officially give a reason for the cancellation, sources who worked with the festival confirmed with Rolling Stone that Georgia’s gun laws were to blame.
Piedmont Park is among the various public spaces in Georgia where guns are allowed to be carried. The Festival, as a temporary user of the park, does not have the ability to supersede that law and force its own restrictions—though the festival’s website states that “Weapons or explosives of any kind” are prohibited.
Atlanta-based journalist George Chidi pointed out the likelihood that Music Midtown would be canceled due to gun laws. “My understanding is that it is because Georgia’s gun laws make it impossible to bar firearms from Piedmont Park, a condition required by many artists’ concert riders,” he wrote on Twitter last Friday, July 29.
This year’s Music Midtown was slated to feature the newly reunited My Chemical Romance in the headline slot, alongside Jack White, Future, and Fall Out Boy.
Elsewhere in the line-up were Phoebe Bridgers, Mitski, 2 Chains, Conan Gray, Turnstile, and more.
American Songwriter has reached out to the festival’s organizers for a statement on the cancellation.
(Photo: Tina Eves)
