It’s been 13 years, but an iconic music festival is set to return to D.C. in September.
A Facebook post from the 9:30 Club — and reposted by the Nationals Park account — shows pictures from past HFStival concerts and teased a Sept. 21 date at Nats Park.
The HFStival, launched by the alternative rock station WHFS, was held every summer from 1990 through 2006. It was held at RFK stadium until 2004, when it was moved to M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore.
A smaller version of the festival was held at Merriweather Post Pavilion in 2010 and 2011.
As WTOP’s Neal Augenstein reported, back then, fans used to sleep out for tickets to a big show.
“It’s kind of the motherlode of sleeping outside waiting for a ticket,” Cerphe Colwell, who used to DJ at WHFS, told WTOP. “I remember standing in line at The Hecht Company, downtown D.C., for hours. Sometimes you’d sleep overnight on the sidewalk.”
WTOP Traffic Reporter Reada Kessler said she went to most of the HFStivals at RFK back in the day.
“It was before social media. So I kind of like to think that ‘what happened at HFSstival, stays at the HFStival,” she joked.
What hasn’t changed is the tension of waiting to hear the HFStival lineup, Kessler said. She and a friend had flown home from a trip and heard tickets would go on sale the next day. So they dropped off their stuff, ran up to Rockville, Maryland, and “waited in line all night.”
Promoter IMP isn’t offering any other clues or details, instead telling fans to just stay tuned. WTOP reached out to the 9:30 Club for comment and was told to stay tuned for more information when they can share it.
WTOP’s Neal Augenstein, Mike Jakaitis and Will Vitka contributed to this report.
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