After years of preparation, Matt Meyer\u2019s dream of bringing a major Spokane music festival to life \u2013 with Washington native Macklemore as headliner \u2013 will come to fruition Saturday.<\/p>\n
Although Meyer, director of entertainment for Spokane Public Facilities District, and his team have been working on this weekend\u2019s inaugural Blessing in Disguise Music Festival for about three years, the vision goes back to 2016. A year later, Meyer and his wife produced Tinnabulation Music Festival, also known as Tin Fest, a downtown event that featured over 50 bands in three days.<\/p>\n
As ONE Spokane Stadium began to break ground, the cogs began to turn once again. Meyer knew the venue\u2019s capacity of about 17,000 would finally be enough to draw A-listers, the kind of musicians and bands difficult to ignore. The first of those household names came from the Outlaw Music Festival Tour in 2024, featuring Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan alongside John Mellencamp and Brittney Spencer. Nelson and Dylan returned in 2025, as well.<\/p>\n
It was at the first Outlaw Music Festival<\/a> concert that Meyer began pitching the idea of using the venue for a music festival of Spokane\u2019s own to Creston Thornton, leader of the \u201cmountain region\u201d for multinational entertainment company Live Nation. The two conversed about the venue\u2019s potential in a press booth until about 1:30 a.m.<\/p>\n \u201cJust chatting about everything; what we envision the stadium being able to handle and being used for, potential shows coming through, and that\u2019s when I brought this up,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cProbably a month or two goes by and I sent him off like a Google Map with a bunch of sharpie marker outlines on where stages could possibly go and very rough drafts like one step above a napkin print.\u201d<\/p>\n It took months of garnering financial estimates and mapping event operations before work could even truly begin. Once the festival was approved by the city and Live Nation became an official partner, the timeline began to take shape.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s why it takes so long. At that point, when you figure into it, you haven\u2019t even done any work that could be seen, it\u2019s all internal,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cEven in my own internal employees, there was only a couple that knew what I was doing because I was asking for estimates or seeing what we could do here or there, but they didn\u2019t have the full scope of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Initially, the plan was for Blessing in Disguise to take place last year. Meyer and Thornton have been dead set on having a Washington-born and proud artist headline the inaugural year, and Seattle\u2019s Macklemore was at the top of the list considering the state\u2019s love for the multi-platinum artist known for songs like \u201cThrift Shop,\u201d \u201cCan\u2019t Hold Us,\u201d \u201cGlorious,\u201d and \u201cDowntown\u201d \u2013 which has a music video filmed in Spokane<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meyer and Thornton had been in touch with Macklemore\u2019s team, but before plans were set in stone they committed to a number of concerts in Europe that summer. The two collectively decided the timing just wasn\u2019t right and that they would wait another year to ensure Macklemore as headliner. His manager also happens to manage pop-rock band AJR, which is now part of the festival\u2019s bill.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like Spokane might be like a second hometown for Macklemore,\u201d Meyer said. \u201cBring him in, have him kick this thing off and start it up. And hopefully him performing and making his mark here will help kick this off and bring this in for years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n Meyer said that being the festival\u2019s first year, they expect to reach about half capacity and may lose money as they hope to build the brand and make Blessing in Disguise a recognizable event year after year.<\/p>\n This year, Meyer expects economic impact to be around $1.5 million to $2 million dollars while a sell out would look like $4.5 million to $5 million dollars. Meyer\u2019s goal is to grow the event to a two-day festival that would double those numbers.<\/p>\n Meyer said this data is based on numbers from local events, venues and the stadium\u2019s own performances, such as the Great Outdoors Comedy Festival. He also said that the economic growth could be larger than expected because about 40% of current ticket sales are coming from outside a 50-mile radius of Spokane while those projected numbers rely on local data.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people excited that the day is coming,\u201d Meyer said.<\/p>\n Other bands include AWOLNATION, Allen Stone, Mother Mother, Everclear, Hippie Sabotage, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, Stephen Day, Izzy Escobar, Vienna Vienna, Ayron Jones, Tim Montana, Chinese American Bear, Gunnar, Frances Browne, the Jaws of Brooklyn, the Residency, Not.GreenDay and Nothing Shameful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After years of preparation, Matt Meyer\u2019s dream of bringing a major Spokane music festival to life \u2013 with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":753478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":["post-753477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/753478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}