LAVA Music Festival names acts

Published 9:08 pm Friday, January 16, 2015

Fitz and the Tantrums, a Los Angeles-based band with a reputation for a high-energy live show, will headline the new Lava Music Festival at the Suffolk Executive Airport on May 16.

Fitz and the Tantrums, a Los Angeles-based band with a reputation for a high-energy live show, will headline the new Lava Music Festival at the Suffolk Executive Airport on May 16.

The LAVA Music Festival announced its musical lineup via a radio, social media and email campaign on Friday, with a total of 10 bands scheduled to perform.

The daylong festival is set for May 16 at the Suffolk Executive Airport, and tickets are available now at a variety of pricing levels.

Fitz and the Tantrums, a Los Angeles-based sextet famous for its energy-packed live performances, will headline the event, which will feature music on two separate stages, along with “local food trucks and food vendors” providing food and beverages throughout the day, according to the event website, www.lavafestival.com. Beer and wine will also be available.

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The other bands announced as part of the festival lineup included Athens, Ga.-based of Montreal, a band with 13 albums, including its recent “Aureate Gloom”; Mutemath, a four-piece collaboration from New Orleans; Tokyo Police Club, hailing from Ontario, Canada; Robert DeLong, a singer/songwriter from Echo Park, Calif., with appearances at Coachella, Lollapalooza and more; Kishi Bashi, of Athens, Ga., whose show promises, organizers stated, “a dazzling array of looping and vocal/violin gymnastics”; Cleveland’s Cloud Nothings; and Brooklyn’s A Great Big Pile of Leaves.

Two Norfolk-based bands also will make appearances. Major and the Monbacks, according to the LAVA website, is “a full 8-piece ensemble, including 3 vocalists, a hypeman, and a lively horn section.” Wyteshayds is described as “a shoegaze dance band” with “elements of dreampop, noise, and 90’s rock.”

Tickets are available now for $55, with prices rising through tiers until the day of the event, when they will cost $85. Children 12 and under will be admitted free.

VIP ticket packages are available for $125 now and $160 at the gate, with children’s VIP tickets costing $65. The VIP package includes special parking, a dedicated lounge area, “air-conditioned covered restrooms with flushable toilets,” a special viewing area at both stages and a commemorative poster with every order, according to the LAVA website.

Organizer Josh Coplon, a Hampton Roads native who worked in Suffolk a couple of years ago, said he expects several thousand people to attend for the day, with visitors coming from Richmond and beyond to take part in the first music festival in the Hampton Roads area.

Coplon is founder and creative director of the festival. This is the first festival he’s coordinated, but he’s working with his father, who has “been there from the beginning with me,” and others, he said recently.