The forefathers and foremothers of D.C.’s groundbreaking hardcore punk scene are reuniting in a weekend of music, picnics and community at a concert series called “Reunion Summer” — but it’s not a traditional reunion.
“I was really feeling hungry for community, but also I was really missing my home of D.C. and its music community,” said event co-organizer and drummer in the Philadelphia-based band Rainbow Crimes, Katy Otto.
Her idea came to fruition when Amanda MacKaye of the band Bed Maker decided to help her organize the series, which will host local performers from both the new and old schools of punk.
Together, Otto and MacKaye are hosting the three-day event, which runs from Friday, July 28, to Sunday, July 30, in the District.
‘Everybody’s moving, everybody’s moving’
MacKaye and her two brothers, Ian and Alec, are not newbies to the punk scene in D.C. Amanda, the youngest of the native Washingtonian trio, watched her brothers perform from an early age before inspiration took her to form her first band, The Headaches, as a preteen in 1979. She later founded Sammich Records before joining Desiderata and the Routineers, before ending up with Bed Maker in 2019.
“That changed my life, being able to see bands playing up close and see them walk offstage and stand right next to me,” MacKaye said. “It really helped me understand that it’s a possibility.”
As the punk scene began to grow in the 1980s, Ian famously became the frontman of Minor Threat and Fugazi, while Alec went on to join The Faith and, more recently, Hammered Hulls.
The name of the concert series is a play on “Revolution Summer” which was the revitalization of the hardcore music scene of the mid-1980s coined by Ian’s record company Dischord.
‘Baby has grown older’
“Nostalgia has some role but I would say, ‘what now? what’s next?’ What is exciting to me about our event is we don’t even know all of the bands intimately … we’re meeting new people through this,” Otto said.
“I’m no fan of nostalgia,” MacKaye said. “I want the music life of this area to always be considered alive.”
The show will help raise funds for the St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood. The church has served as a socially progressive space for fundraising, community activism and punk shows since the 1970s.
“Part of the intentionality of going to St. Stephen’s was to remind people that we don’t need to be in a traditional … music venue in order to hear music. It’s where you interact and find the love of music is wherever it’s happening,” MacKaye said.
The first concert will be held at the church at 6 p.m. Friday with opening act Breezy Supreme, a Black alternative rock artist from Maryland. Tickets are $15 per day.
In total, eight bands, both new and old, will perform at the weekend event.
In addition to the shows on Friday and Saturday, there will be a free community picnic at Fort Reno Park from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. Reunion-goers are welcome to bring their own food, drinks and blankets.
MacKaye is a longtime organizer of the Fort Reno concert series, a separate event held in the Tenleytown neighborhood every summer. She said that series gives all types of musicians the space to try their hand at performing.
“It serves its best purpose now as being an incubator space for new musicians or even seasoned musicians, if you will, who are trying out some new ideas,” she said.
Festival-goers are also welcomed to join the musicians Sunday at 1 p.m. at an archive event at the MLK Jr. Memorial Library in Penn Quarter where old photographs, zines, recordings and posters will be on display to the public.
