The inaugural Stone Festival has had a bit of a roller-coaster day. Just as they expanded their massive line-up by a whole lot more, a band has slammed on the breaks, tapping out just a couple of days after being announced, explaining that “it just wasn’t feeling right”.
The 2nd line-up announcement revealed that Jimmy Barnes, The Living End, Noiseworks, Ian Moss, and The Choirboys will be joining the likes of Van Halen and Buckcherry on the Saturday night. Guy Sebastian, Diesel, Mark Seymour, Shannon Noll, Dallas Frasca and Mark Moroney will be reppin’ Sunday, with Billy Joel and Icehouse.
What is shaping up to be an absolute weapon of a festival taking place late April is starting to raise a couple of eyebrows. The departure of Baby Animals from the line-up came out of left-field, but the plot thickens. The band announced via Facebook that the tour had “all became too difficult, too quickly. We hope not to disappoint too many of our supporters with this news, but it just wasn’t feeling right to us.”
The band assure fans that they will make it up to them with “a brand new single in April, plus a new album (finally) and national tour shortly after. Big year ahead!”, signed off by vocalist Suze DeMarchi.
These comments seem to match an assessment of the event from the man himself, promoter Andrew McManus. According to Maitland Mercury, McManus commented on the event saying, “Smells very fishy? Unknown promoters… be very careful punters… you have been warned here!”
Responding to questions on his Facebook page, McManus explained further, “[The promoters have] been saying that they have my acts which we are announcing next week… all I can say is be very, very careful and stand by for 60 minutes expose next weekend”, stopping short of confirming which acts were his.
Now we wait to see if Stone Festival will take off, or add its bones to the pile.
