Concert season is back - what is everyone seeing?

Summer lineup is looking solid this year. Already have tickets to three shows, and honestly I'm still hunting for a few more before the schedules fill up. This time of year is exactly what the off-season grind is for—getting through the winter months knowing that festival announcements and tour drops are right around the corner. I feel like this season has a different energy compared to last year; more bands are actually hitting the road with full production instead of stripped-down sets, and the venues are booking pretty aggressive schedules. Anyone else building out their summer concert schedule?

Let me break down what I've got locked in so far. First up is a mid-sized amphitheater show in late June—one of those outdoor sheds with a lawn section that's notorious for brutal sun during the afternoon sets but turns into a perfect spot once the headliner hits the stage around 9 PM. I grabbed reserved seats this time because last year I did lawn for a different show there and spent half the set trying to find a spot where the sound wasn't completely washed out by the crowd chatter. The venue's PA system is a L-Acoustics K1 setup, which is actually pretty decent for an outdoor space, but the lawn speakers always lag a few milliseconds behind due to the delay towers. If you're sitting on the lawn, you have to stand way back near the mix position to get the best audio alignment. Second show is a small club gig—capacity around 500, no seats, just a general admission floor with a low stage. Those are the ones I live for because you can feel the kick drum in your chest and there's no barrier between you and the band. The soundcheck for that one starts at 4 PM, and I'm planning to show up early enough to catch the opener's load-in just to see how they ring out the monitors. Third show is a one-day festival in August with four stages and a lineup that's heavy on post-punk revival and some shoegaze revival acts. Festival logistics are always a beast—deciding which stage to camp at, dealing with conflicting set times, and figuring out the water refill stations before the heat hits. I've already mapped out the site layout based on last year's map to know which stages have the best shade coverage and which food vendors have the shortest lines.

Beyond the tickets themselves, the whole process of securing them has become a mini-adventure. For the amphitheater show, I went through the venue's presale code I got from being on their email list—still had to fight through the queue for about 15 minutes, and by the time I got in, the first ten rows were already snapped up by the platinum pricing algorithm. Saw some seats that were listed at triple face value just because they were near the aisle. I hate that dynamic pricing nonsense, but at this point it's just part of the game. For the club show, I used a local promoter's early bird link that went out on their social media at a random time—like 10:42 AM on a Tuesday. Had to set a notification for it. The festival was the easiest because I bought a tier 1 pass back in March before the full lineup dropped, which saved about $40 compared to the current tier. Also grabbed the parking add-on early because the lots fill up fast and the overflow lot is a 30-minute shuttle ride away.

One thing I've been paying more attention to this year is the supporting acts. A lot of these tours have really strong openers that are worth arriving early for. The amphitheater show has a young garage rock band opening that I've been following on Bandcamp for about a year, and their live reputation is supposedly chaotic in the best way—I've seen videos where the singer ends up in the crowd for most of the set. The club show opener is a solo electronic act that does live looping with a guitar and a bunch of pedals, which I'm curious to see how that translates in a small room with presumably minimal lighting. I usually check the live recordings on Archive.org or YouTube from previous tour stops to get a sense of the setlist depth and whether the band is playing deep cuts or just the singles.

What about the rest of you? Any must-see tours you're locked into? I'm still on the fence about a couple of amphitheater shows in July where the lawn tickets are cheap but the weather could be brutal—highs in the upper 90s with humidity last year meant a lot of people passed out before the headliner even started. Also curious if anyone's dealing with the new ticketing restrictions some venues are testing—like no transfers until 72 hours before the show, which makes buying secondhand a headache. Let's hear what you've got lined up.