Festival Features Post-Grunge Icons of the 1990s and 2000s Audio Ink Radio

Festival Features Post-Grunge Icons of the 1990s and 2000s

2025-02-27

A nostalgic rock festival is bringing together a lineup of post-grunge favorites on one bill, proving the genre still has juice left in it. – Author: Cat Badra, Photo via Richard Beland

The post-grunge genre was packed with big-sounding, anthemic songs that took off in the late-1990s and are still popular today. All you have to do is look at Creed’s 2024 reunion to see that post-grunge music is still one of the most popular forms of rock music with the rock audience. Not only did Creed sell out two of their reunion cruises, but they also embarked on a tour across the U.S. that had them selling out stadiums and arenas to the point where they played some major markets twice in a six-month span.

Now, a nostalgic rock festival is bringing together a lineup of post-grunge favorites on one bill.

Rock Festival Harks Back to the Post-Grunge Era

The Summer of ’99 + Beyond Festival is back for a second year. As with its first year, the event is once again spearheaded by Creed, but this time around, it’ll take place over two days instead of one and welcome Nickelback. What’s extra cool is that this show marks the first time the two bands have shared a concert bill together since 1999, which makes the festival’s name really fit the bill.

This year’s event will take place on July 18 and 19, 2025, in East Troy, Wisconsin, at the Alpine Valley Music Theatre. Even though it’s 2025, the lineup truly does look like it’s out of the late-1990s, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Nickelback will headline the opening night of the festival on Friday, July 18, and the rest of the bill will bring Our Lady Peace, Live, Daughtry, Tonic and Lit. Creed will headline the show on Saturday, July 19, with other acts including 3 Doors Down, Sevendust, Mammoth WVH, Hinder, Vertical Horizon and Fuel.

The festival made it debut 2024 in San Bernardino, California, and had a big demand for tickets. Since demand was so good the first time around, Creed decided to make it a two-day festival and move it to the Midwest to give some new people a chance to relive the magic of that era.

Creed and Nickelback Together Again

Creed and Nickelback aren’t newbies to the Alpine Valley venue. Creed first performed there in 2000, and Nickelback played there for the first time in 2007.

Creed played their first show in 12 years in April of last year, during the “Summer of ’99” cruise, and that extended into a full-fledged reunion tour. The group’s concert schedule for 2024 included both the “Summer of ’99” and “Are You Ready?” tour legs and ran from April until December. Openers for that trek included 3 Doors Down, Mammoth WVH, Daughtry and Finger Eleven, so it also featured acts from the late-1990s, expect for Mammoth WVH, which is a newer group featuring Wolfgang Van Halen, the son of the late Eddie Van Halen.

Mark Tremonti of Creed caught up with Audio Ink Radio in late 2023 and talked about the band’s choice to reunite He also said that if he had known that the reunion gigs would do so well, the band members would have planned out some new music to go with the gigs.

“If we stared writing music now, it would take us months and months and months to write it, and then months to record it and then six months of setting it up, and by then, it’s time for us to start Alter Bridge,” Tremonti said at the time. So, no promise of new music quite yet.

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Cat Badra

Meet the expert - Cat Badra is a music writer for Audio Ink Radio and a range of other music, sports and lifestyle publications. She's a graduate of Michigan State University with a master's degree in theater and speech. Contact her at cat@audioinkradio.com.

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