Yellowcard, Taking Back Sunday & More to Headline 2023 Four Chord Music Festival

The Four Chord Music Festival is back with the announcement of its 2023 lineup, which will bring a stacked roster of punk and indie bands to Western Pennsylvania’s Wild Things Park on August 12 and 13 for a two-day, DIY celebration from across the punk rock spectrum.

This year’s headliners include Yellowcard — performing their 2003 album Ocean Avenue in full — as well as Taking Back Sunday, The Gaslight Anthem, The Interrupters and Alkaline Trio. Also on the bill are Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, Waterparks, The Maine, Streetlight Manifesto, Face To Face, American Football, Magnolia Park and more.

“I started the festival because I got frustrated with some of the politics behind getting on tours,” says festival founder Rishi Bahl, a touring artist and college professor who first launched Four Chord Music Festival in 2015 as a local punk rock event in a 1,500-capacity club. Since then, the festival has grown into a massive stadium-sized two-day destination event featuring the punk scene’s biggest and brightest — while keeping its independent DIY roots intact.

“We have some of the lowest ticketing fees in any festival of this size in the whole United States,” says Bahl, noting that Four Chord uses the ShowClix ticketing platform. “We control the cost of beverages. We don’t price gouge for alcohol. We don’t price gouge for food. We have 30 and 50 local vendors on site. We have a DIY rate for small, independent companies, and we have a higher rate for more corporatized companies.”

Booking Yellowcard is a return to Four Chord’s roots, adds Bahl, noting that the band headlined the festival in 2015 before breaking up shortly afterward. “When we heard they were getting back together to play a big Ocean Avenue tour, we wanted to be a part of it,” he says. “If you grew up in the early 2000s and were in the punk rock, pop punk, emo scene, that was a seminal record.”

The festival is split into two days — a pop-punk emo day and a punk rock day — and there are no conflicting sets happening that will see one artist playing at the same time as another.

“Everything we do is focused around making it a good experience for the fans and the bands, without making it cost prohibitive,” says Bahl. “I put this festival on each year knowing what it is like to be a kid on a tight budget and we go out of our way to make sure the festival stays affordable and carries on the DIY tradition.”

Single-day general admission tickets for the festival start at $94, while single-day VIP tickets are priced at $196. More information and tickets can be found at www.FourChordMusicFestival.com.