Punk In The Park promoter Brew Ha Ha plans a new punk festival after the boycott

Brew Ha Ha Productions, the company behind the Punk In The Park festival series, is announcing a new punk festival. It is the first thing the promoter has put on the calendar since a boycott forced it to cancel everything it had planned.

The boycott started when it emerged that Cameron Collins, who owns Brew Ha Ha, had donated to Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign. Dropkick Murphys said they would not play the festival again, and Collins issued a statement setting out where he stood politically.

That did not settle it. The Dead Kennedys were scheduled for a Punk In The Park event earlier this year and Jello Biafra, the band's founding singer, was unhappy about the booking. The pressure kept building, and Collins ended up cancelling everything he had lined up.

A promoter whose politics are a live issue for the acts on his bill has a particular problem in punk, where a refusal to play is itself a recognised form of statement. Booking a festival in that genre means asking bands to decide in public whether they will appear, which is a harder sell than a routine offer.

Which acts have agreed to play the new festival was not given in the report, and the connection between the new event and the Punk In The Park name has not been spelled out. Details will go on the festival tracker as they are confirmed, and more from this scene sits on our rock hub.