The inaugural All Your Friends Fest is off to a raucous start.
The two-day pop-punk festival kicked off Friday afternoon at Burl’s Creek, filling into a throng of more than 10,000 strong by the time headliners Billy Talent closed out the main stage.
All Your Friends Fest has been marketed as a nostalgia festival — such as Best Friends Festival or When We Were Young — but there are more than enough new acts, and more than enough young people, to represent a new generation of punk fans.
Well-known among Simcoe County punk circles for more than two decades, Johnny Six Blocks bought tickets for the festival as soon as they went on sale, drawn in by the legacy acts he grew up.
“I think it’s really important they have a lot of stuff for the older people like us. It’s cool to see Gob; I grew up on Gob. Silverstein, Fall Out Boy and stuff like that,” he said. “When they came out, you kind of knew about them, opening for the other stuff that you liked. Now they’re at that level of those big bands.”
But he was just as excited to check out some of the lesser-known bands making up the undercard.
“Then there are other bands that I sort of heard of, but never listened to,” he continued. “It’s nice that there’s new big-ish artists coming out that are going to be the next ones in line. So, like in 15-16 years they’ll be the ones headlining. It’s not just a purely nostalgia festival. There’s some new stuff coming along.”
All Your Friends Fest concludes Saturday with Fall Out Boy headlining, alongside Jimmy Eat World, Dashboard Confessional and scores of others.
— With files from Patrick Bales
