Review: Inaugural TC Summer Fest a Success with Some Room for Future Improvement

[Melissa Berman]

This past weekend for the first time, Twins and music fans swung down to Target Field not to watch a Pablo López masterclass or a Byron Buxton upper deck blast, but to take in some good ol' rock and roll music at the inaugural TC Summer Fest, a two-day music festival.  

Image courtesy of Melissa Berman

The Twins hit a solid double with the inaugural TC Summer Fest. A complete, out-of-the-park home run, perhaps not, but it should be considered a success, due mainly in part to electric performances by each night’s headliners, and I and every other attendee with whom I spoke said they had a blast at the event. And to me, whether or not fans ultimately had a good time at the event matters most of all in judging its success. 

Target Field has hosted several other rock shows, including Journey and Def Leppard in 2018, the Eagles and Jimmy Buffett in 2018, and Weezer and Green Day last summer, but it has never hosted a full-on music festival. TC Summer Fest comes when other area festivals have shuttered or were canceled for 2023, including Walker Art Center’s Rock the Garden, Twin Cities Summer Jam, and the Basilica Block Party. This inaugural concert likely sought to capitalize on a Twin Cities market featuring no other rock festivals.

On Friday night, despite playing in front of a noticeably sparse crowd (the Twins closed the entire upper deck and upgraded everyone with nosebleed tickets to better seats in the stadium), Las Vegas-based anthemic rockers The Killers brought down Target Field’s nonexistent roof: they opened with the ubiquitous anthem “Mr. Brightside,” which the Twins have perhaps not coincidentally been using as one of its stadium singalong songs this season, and followed it up with crowd-favorite hits like “Somebody Told Me,” “When You Were Young,” “Human,” and “All These Things That I Have Done,” which electric front man Brandon Flowers led the entire crowd in singing its refrain. 

Partway through the show, Flowers, who wore a dazzling, Princelike purple coat for most of the performance, introduced Prince’s “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” as a “nod” to our “hometown.” 

There were a few other local nods on Friday: one of the drummers of The Flaming Lips wore a "Win Twins" Minnie and Paul Twins t-shirt during their performance, and front man Wayne Coyne held up a giant balloon display that said "F--- Yeah Twin Cities," which he then tossed into the crowd.

Supporting act Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard humorously acknowledged that they were playing at a baseball stadium by joking that he was getting distracted by all the good food smells. He said we probably had some sort of "f----- up" food like a "three-foot-long hot dog," (which, he's not off there- remember the Boomstick?) before requesting that the fans send him one backstage. 

On Saturday, a bigger crowd of 27,000, many families with children, filled Target Field for Imagine Dragons. The Twins opened up the upper deck for this day, and the Dragons dazzled the crowd with stadium-friendly hits like “Believer,” “Thunder,” and “I’m On Top of the World,” the last of which the Twins have used in the past as their in-stadium win song. 

The event had emcees, including local radio personalities, to introduce the musical acts, which was a nice touch.

Overall, I was impressed with the logistics of the festival, and after having run many concerts there over the years, it was no wonder they had it down to a science. Security to get into the stadium was a breeze: completely smooth and fast with the help of the new Evolv scanners. On the field, there were drink vendors and a good number of portable bathrooms. Plenty of employees were down on the field checking tickets and helping answer questions. My only complaint was that there wasn’t anywhere to fill up a water bottle down on the field (though you could buy water), so at one point, I left the field to walk up the stairs and fill it at a drinking fountain. But the new, giant Target Field big screen provided an excellent way for those further from the stage to see the action, and I thought the stage setup, with on-field screens on either side of the stage, was fan-friendly. Friday's music acts all began almost exactly on time, which I greatly appreciated. 

Despite the musical acts being a success, there is room for improvement for next year, and I’m sure the event organizers will learn a lot from this year’s trial run. 

Among the issues, tickets were too expensive. When tickets went on sale in May, tickets for the standing pit in front of the stage were $239, floor seats were $219, and even the cheap seats in the upper deck were $74, all before fees. The argument could be that people are getting five musical acts for their money, but this was enough to dissuade some of the more casual music fans I know who perhaps would have been interested in swinging down to the stadium to see Death Cab for Cutie, for example, but were not willing to pay top dollar. Then the Twins began running a 50% off ticket sale for at least the last month before the show, after I had bought pit tickets to see my lifelong favorite band, The Killers, on Friday night. Oh well. The Twins were pushing ticket sales up until the day of the event, and based on the empty seats, I can see why. 

Other issues are that TC Summerfest also took place on the same weekend as the sold-out Lakefront Music Festival in Prior Lake (not the planners' fault; they had to schedule it during the All Star Break); some online said that they had hardly heard about the festival, even though video board ads inside the stadium during games were almost omnipresent; and second-on-the-Saturday-bill AJR backed out with a couple of weeks until the festival (this is of no fault to the festival organizers either, but it certainly didn’t help sell last-minute tickets).

There is also the issue that the first musical act started at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, a day when many were working. On Friday, local group Yam House and indie pop band Cannons played in front of a sparse crowd before fans arrived for Death Cab for Cutie at 6 p.m. Saturday started at the same time, but at least it was a weekend. 

Other fans on social media were less than enthused with Saturday’s lineup in particular, though this was the more-attended day of the two. Though music acts are a matter of personal preference, to many, at least three or four of the acts on Saturday were new names to them. There is nothing wrong with discovering new music at a festival and not every single name needs to be A-list, especially in the first year of a festival that is just trying to get its feet wet, and yet, people would likely not want to pay $100-$200 for that.

And then there is the fact that Summerfest, the nationally-renowned, mega three-weekend music festival in Milwaukee, has filed a lawsuit against the Twins for trademark infringement for the use of the term “Summer Fest,” While I don’t think that many people are going to confuse the two events (though Summerfest thinks so), I wonder why the Twins chose that name, which is regionally-synonymous with Milwaukee’s bash, and why they didn’t choose something like the Target Field Summer Jam or even more generally the Target Field Music Festival (this is what I was referring to it as with my friends who hadn’t heard of the event).  

Hopefully, the event will be back and even better next year, and the event organizers learn from some of this year’s growing pains and make it even bigger and better. It really is nice to have another local music festival right in town in a landscape with so few nearby, and I applaud the Twins for being ambitious and taking on a music festival. Indeed, I know how difficult it is to make a go of it with music festivals- this past spring. Racket MN did a great story on what happened to all the MN music festivals. But overall, the organizers threw a pleasant, enjoyable music festival experience for fans, I had a blast, and the event staff and planners deserve to put on a collective "Land of 10,000 Rakes" vest for this one.

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Did you attend the inaugural TC Summer Fest? What were your impressions? Let us know in a COMMENT below. 

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[Andrew Bryz-Gornia]

My wife and I were at Saturday's show with tickets in Section 316. We bought our tickets before the 50% off sale so yeah, that stung a little. A few concession stands were closed, including the cheap family-friendly stand, which was a little annoying because after shelling out ~$150 just to be there, we were hoping to save some money elsewhere. 

I felt all of the acts were good except Oliver Tree (filling in for AJR), of which I think I'm not part of his target audience (he did have a lot of fans though, and got a lot of people arm-waving and throwing up rocker horns during his set).

As for the lineup... every single concert I've ever been to has included warm-up acts that skew more towards the anonymous. People just want to complain that it wasn't tailored specifically to themselves, I guess. 

[Melissa Berman]

10 hours ago, Andrew Bryz-Gornia said:

My wife and I were at Saturday's show with tickets in Section 316. We bought our tickets before the 50% off sale so yeah, that stung a little. A few concession stands were closed, including the cheap family-friendly stand, which was a little annoying because after shelling out ~$150 just to be there, we were hoping to save some money elsewhere. 

I felt all of the acts were good except Oliver Tree (filling in for AJR), of which I think I'm not part of his target audience (he did have a lot of fans though, and got a lot of people arm-waving and throwing up rocker horns during his set).

As for the lineup... every single concert I've ever been to has included warm-up acts that skew more towards the anonymous. People just want to complain that it wasn't tailored specifically to themselves, I guess. 

Hopefully next year they just have cheaper tickets from the get go. It was pretty unfair that people who jumped on tickets right away were rewarded with paying the highest prices. I heard there were some lines for the concession stands, I'm sure in part due to closures of some stands. 

Oliver Tree I had never heard of before- apparently he makes internet, jokey-type music, but I guess he's pretty big (he has twice the amount of monthly followers on spotify than AJR, which I was really surprised about) but I suppose at least they were able to get someone other than a local band for this slot. 

I really enjoyed Friday's lineup. I just enjoy live music in general, so even though The Flaming Lips were a little out there for me, I still had fun with the experience!

Thanks for taking the time to read and comment!