Danny Wimmer Presents announces 2021 festival calendar

Louder Than Life, Aftershock and others plan a 2021 return

As the music industry looks to bring live events back to eager fans in 2021, leading independent live entertainment producer and promoter Danny Wimmer Presents is excited to announce its upcoming festival calendar for the year. The event lineup includes the return of fan favorites Louder Than Life and Welcome To Rockville, alongside the previously announced Aftershock, and new to the DWP family, Inkcarceration Music & Tattoo Festival.

Louder Than Life, the largest rock festival in America, will take place September 23-26th at Highland Festival Grounds at KY Expo Center in Louisville, Kentucky and will be adding a Thursday night celebration event to kick off the weekend. All current pass holders will receive admission to the newly added Thursday night kickoff celebration for free.

Welcome To Rockville will return with an expanded four day festival weekend that furthers its reputation as Florida’s biggest rock experience, and will move to a new weekend for 2021, November 11-14th. Rockville will also have a new home, relocating to the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. Due to the festival date change from May to November, current Welcome To Rockville ticketholders will have the opportunity to request a refund or use their passes for the upcoming November festival. All fans who defer their passes to Rockville 2021 will receive complimentary access to the newly added 4th day.

Danny Wimmer Presents is also pleased to announce a new partnership formed with the creators of the fan-favorite Inkcarceration Music & Tattoo Festival. Inkcarceration is scheduled for July 23-25 at the famous Ohio State Reformatory (aka “Shawshank State Prison” from The Shawshank Redemption) in Mansfield, Ohio.

Information on band lineups, ticket information and on sale dates for Inkcarceration, Louder Than Life and Welcome To Rockville 2021 will be coming this spring. In addition, Danny Wimmer Presents has partnered with Sixthman to conquer land and sea in 2022 with an immersive five day cruise and private island festival in Harvest Caye, Belize, from February 16-21, 2022. More details, including lineup and reservations will be coming in the next few months.

The previously announced Aftershock, the West Coast’s Biggest Rock Festival, which has sold out for the last five consecutive years, will be bigger and better than ever, taking place October 7-10th at Discovery Park in Sacramento, California. Aftershock 2021 will be headlined by Metallica (performing two unique sets, one on Friday and one on Sunday) and My Chemical Romance (Saturday), who were both confirmed for the sold out postponed 2020 event. The diverse Aftershock 2021 lineup will also include: Limp Bizkit, Rancid, The Offspring, Social Distortion, Rise Against, Volbeat, Machine Gun Kelly, Mastodon, Gojira, Seether, Parkway Drive, and many more. Passes for Aftershock 2021 are almost sold out; fans are encouraged to get them before it’s too late at AftershockFestival.com.

Several other longstanding events within the Danny Wimmer Presents portfolio will take a hiatus in 2021, with a commitment to return bigger than ever for the 2022 season, including Epicenter (Charlotte, NC) and Sonic Temple Art + Music Festival (Columbus, OH).

“Taking our festivals down last year was one of the most painful experiences our company has ever lived through,” explains Danny Wimmer, Founder of Danny Wimmer Presents. “And it wasn’t just painful for us, it was hard on the bands, fans, partners, cities and vendors. It has become clear to us that we will not be able to have our festivals this spring, and for a variety of reasons, it is not possible to produce all of our annual festivals in the window of Fall 2021, so we made the difficult decision to only produce Aftershock, Welcome To Rockville and Louder Than Life this year. These are our longest running and most geographically diverse festivals. Focusing on these three events, along with Inkcarceration Festival at the end of July gives as many fans as possible, from all over the country, the chance to rock again.”

All current pass holders for Epicenter and Sonic Temple will be emailed today with options for a full refund or the opportunity to apply their existing credit to any of DWP’s 2021 festivals, including Inkcarceration, Louder Than Life, Aftershock and Welcome To Rockville.

Danny Wimmer Presents is known worldwide for their stellar portfolio of music and lifestyle events, which includes Aftershock, Bourbon & Beyond, Epicenter, Hometown Rising, Louder Than Life, Sonic Temple Art + Music Festival, and Welcome To Rockville. DWP recently entered the digital content curation space, promoting pay-per-view concert streams and creating the popular digital series’ Offstage with DWP and Beyond the Barrel, with new episodes debuting this spring.

Buddy Iahn
Buddy Iahn

Buddy Iahn founded The Music Universe when he decided to juxtapose his love of web design and music. As a lifelong drummer, he decided to take a hiatus from playing music to report it. The website began as a fun project in 2013 to one of the top independent news sites. Email: info@themusicuniverse.com