News release from the BAALS Music Festival:
BAALS drops the official date for 2015!
(January 28, 2015) — A Better Fort and BAALS Music Festival is excited to announce the official date of August 1, 2015.
In 2014, the festival broke attendance records during a two-part concert series located on the 300 block of Calhoun Street and the Headwaters Park Pavilion. Now, officially called The BAALS Music Festival, the event will return under the pavillion and for the first time programming will run the span of a full day including both national and local acts to be announced later this year.
A Better Fort (ABF) will be at the helm of powering volunteer efforts in 2015 and assist BAALS to produce a larger scale and premier multi-genre music festival in Fort Wayne, Indiana. ABF puts BAALS Music Festival in great hands with dedicated volunteers that show their love for the growing entity, that is downtown Fort Wayne.
In July 2012, ABF held the inaugural #House4aHouse when they shut down the 800th block of So Cal (South Calhoun) on the opening night of the Three Rivers Festival for a block party that attracted citizens of all ages. In its first year there were over 2,000 in attendance growing rapidly in following years with 2014 resulting in just over 10,000+ people in combined attendance between the two shows. The festival has donated over $15,000 to the Mad Anthonys Children’s Hope House and will continue their philanthropic efforts again in 2015 earmarking $5,000 to be donated to a selected charity.
The name BAALS has an underlying and symbolic meaning after Fort Wayne became the rear-end of jokes revolving around the former mayor’s name. Festival leaders took some umbrage and that’s where they conjured up the name for the event. In summary, the objective is to take negative stereotypes and rhetoric, poke fun at them and embrace them as something of the past and make it clear that this is a new day for Fort Wayne…and to show the world that this city, in fact, has #BAALS.
View the 2014 Aftermovie