PHOENIX (CelebrityAccess) The Viva PHX music festival is taking 2018 off after continual growth.
Organizers Stateside Presents have opted to put the four year old festival on hiatus.
This year some 100 bands filled 20 venues in downtown Phoenix including such acts as Girl Talk, The Maine, Wyclef Jean, Fucked Up, Temples, Joyce Manor, and the Menzingers. More than 12,000 people attended.
Still, despite this success, Stateside Presents decided to give the festival a rest in 2018.
Stateside founder Charlie Levy says “a multitude of factors” convinced him and the Stateside team to pull the plug on next year’s Viva PHX.
“We were having a tough time getting the level of artists that we strive to get. And that’s one of the things I’m super-proud of is that of those hundred bands on 20 stages, you can walk anywhere to see any band at any time and it’s super-top-quality music.”
Another factor was the opening of Stateside’s latest venue, the Van Buren, a joint venture with Live Nation which has become a large concert draw in the area. “Just a handful of us on our team do Viva PHX,” Levy says. “And we were stretched a little thin.”
