23RD ANNUAL PUNK ROCK BOWLING AND MUSIC FESTIVAL
ANNOUNCES 2023 LAS VEGAS LINEUP, TICKETS ON SALE NOW!
Featuring Rancid, Bad Religion, Dropkick Murphys,
The Interrupters, Suicidal Tendencies, The Damned,
Me First and The Gimme Gimmes, L7, Face to Face
Gbh, The Exploited and Many More
Festival Runs May 27-29, 2023
Club Shows Run May 26-29
In Downtown Las Vegas
3-DAY PASSES NOW ON SALE
Punk Rock Bowling & Music Festival returns forits 23rd iteration in 2023! Proving once again that they are the mainstay of Punk music festivals with headliners Rancid, Bad Religion, Dropkick Murphys, The Interrupters, Suicidal Tendencies, and The Damned stacking the bill. The lineup for the music festival, which runs Saturday through Monday, will also include L7, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Agnostic Front, Face to Face, The Exploited, along with many bands new to the festival including UltraBomb, Surfbort, The Chisel, Anti-Heroes and End It! A blend of still-active legacy acts and bands at the front of the pack for punk rock has always been Punk Rock Bowling’s calling card.
As always, there will be pool parties, gambling, a bowling tournament, and club shows, all to be announced at the start of the new year. As for today, tickets and hotel packages are on sale now! Additionally, we are thrilled to share that PRB is returning to their 6th street location, where they’ll deck out the festival grounds based on the feedback from their supporters. There will be free water, a craft bar program, amazing food choices, plenty of shade, comfy turf, lockers, and vendors galore. Stay tuned, as we’ll be rolling out all kinds of updates soon.
When Youth Brigade co-founders and brothers Shawn and Mark Stern decided to throw a punk rock bowling tournament in Las Vegas in 1999, they planned it as a party where friends from bands and labels could come together, have a few drinks, hear some live music and knock down some pins. Over two decades later, Punk Rock Bowling & Music Festival has become the premiere punk-oriented event of the year with a lineup that has included everyone from The Hives to DEVO, Iggy Pop and The Lunachicks to Cock Sparrer. It’s a place where legendary bands can share lanes with up-and-coming musical acts and experience a sense of community that doesn’t exist in other genres—and this year’s lineup looks to be the festival’s most exciting bill to date as it honors the past while looking toward the future.
“It’s going to be the 40 year anniversary of Youth Brigade’s Sound & Fury as well as Suicidal Tendencies and Agnostic Fronts’ first releases, so both bands will be playing,” Shawn explains. “We’ve also got a lot of Southern California and English bands that have played before but haven’t played in a while: Rancid, Bad Religion, Dropkick Murphys, The Interrupters, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, The Damned, Fishbone, L7… the lineup is pretty stacked.” In addition to their work in Youth Brigade, Shawn cut his teeth in the early eighties booking some of Los Angeles’ biggest punk shows, including Youth Movement ‘83, a local punk rock show that also featured TSOL, Social Distortion and Wasted Youth and drew over 3,500 fans to the Palladium. Forty years later, the size and scope of the punk scene has evolved but the sentiment behind bringing people together to bond over power chords and stage dives has largely remained the same.
“I think Punk Rock Bowling is important because it’s an annual meeting space for people all around the world from the punk rock community and I hope what we do inspires people to keep believing in those ideals that have always been political,” Shawn explains. “We live in some really crazy, weird, uncertain times,” he continues. “When I got into punk it was always about protests and calling people out and I think it continues to do that to this day. That’s why it’s important to support all these new, younger bands and I hope that’s what Punk Rock Bowling is able to do: It gives them an opportunity to come and see bands that hopefully were an inspiration to them to start playing music and it gives the older people like myself the opportunity to be inspired and say, ‘I’m happy to see that kids are carrying on the tradition and getting out there to try to fight the mess we see all across our society and all across the world.”
While the message behind the music may be urgent, Punk Rock Bowling is an escape from the capitalist grind of concertgoers’ daily lives, and in addition to the bowling, and live music, the festival also features pool parties, poker tournaments and more. As someone who embarked on one of the first nationwide punk tours ever, which was documented in the 1984 documentary Another State Of Mind, it’s also a full circle moment for Shawn to see the style of music bring so many generations of enthusiasts together for one magical weekend. “I feel so lucky that I can make a living doing the things that I love like playing and promoting music and I’ve been doing that since I was a teenager,” Stern recalls.
Punk Rock Bowling & Music Festival is a crash course in the way that a festival can grow organically and stay true to its original roots without feeling constrained by them. It’s four days of music and fun that’s reasonably priced and accessible to people who deeply care about this type of music and want to share the experience with others. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint and you need to pace yourself,” Stern advises, “but you’ll get the opportunity to see some incredible bands and some phenomenal performances. Some bands you may know, many bands you may have never heard of before—but most of all, you’ll come and you’ll be welcomed into a community and make lifelong friends. At this point, many people don’t really worry about who’s going to play because they know it’s gonna be somebody that they like or somebody that they never knew of that they discover,” Shawn summarizes. “I’m just incredibly thankful that people have supported what we do and put their trust in our ability to make an amazing weekend for them.”
General admission 3-day passes are $190, and minimal VIP three-day passes are $475; both come with a presale access code that allows purchasers first dibs on tickets for up to three club shows. (Club show tickets go on sale February, 2023.) All tickets can be purchased at punkrockbowling.com.
Stay tuned for more updates for the 23rd Annual Punk Rock Bowling and Music Festival. More information, hotel deals, and bowling can be found at punkrockbowling.com. Follow the festival on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok for the latest updates and news.
Punk Rock Bowling and Music Festival