Enthusiasm is contagious. When people are genuinely amped, others catch the mood. It’s one of the best things about being human.
For the last few years, E.P. Bradley and his wife and bandmate, Kayla Long, have been putting together an absolute gem of a free local music festival, and this year, it's bigger and better than ever. Tempe Noise Takeover (soon to be the well-known Valley acronym, TNT) has risen from the ashes of Tempe Noise Pop Takeover thanks to another organization saying, “Hey now…. ‘Tempe Noise Pop Takeover’ sounds a little too much like our name,” (It didn’t), and getting all legal. The best part about it is how gosh-darned excited literally everyone New Times spoke to about the event.
If a free music festival wasn’t good enough, there is also an art exhibition at two venues. Proceeds from the event, including a nice portion of the liquor sales at Time Out Lounge and Yucca Tap Room, will be headed to local nonprofit organization One-n-ten, which provides essential support to LGBTQ+ youth. Rock out, do good and get your steps in while feeding your soul. What could be better on a Friday and Saturday night in Tempe?
Somewhere, a mathematician is devising a formula proving that multiplying the enthusiasm a promotion team has for an event (F) by the talent of the bands involved (U) and the proximity of the venues (N) offers a measure of an event's fun. Stats never lie, so it must be true.
For those who are already sold on the concept, three Tempe venues are hosting a total of 40 bands (give or take, you know how bands are) on Friday, Sept. 5, starting at 7 p.m. and Saturday, Sept. 6, beginning at 4 p.m. The participating venues are Yucca Tap Room (21+), Time Out Lounge (21+), and Rocket Space (all ages). Google Maps guesstimates that you can walk between the three venues in about five minutes, but Google definitely does not consider stopping to say hi to friends or checking out the art in the venues.
Walking venue to venue will be an excellent opportunity to turn yourself on to what the local music scene offers. This is of utmost importance to Bradley, who grew up in Phoenix but bounced around the country for many of his adult years, and is no stranger to putting together significant music events.
“We did a thing called the Big Ass Boom Box in Portland (starting in 2014)," says Bradley, who is also a member of the band, Joan of Arkansas, and will be playing the festival on Saturday night. "We did about five of those, and we basically wanted to see how we could make a free festival. I wanted to make a thing where, you know, we were going to promote the hell out of it, get a good crowd, and get bands some good exposure."
While Tempe Noise Takeover is a labor of love for Bradley and Long, they realized that for the festival to grow from where it began in 2023, they needed help. Building a free festival takes time, money and dedication, and the duo, who recently got married before Joan of Arkansas played a celebratory set on Aug. 2 at the Yucca, have enlisted several friends, as well as the Tempe Arts and Music Coalition (TAMC) and Coven PHX. With enough help, mountains can be moved.
Critical to the shared vision: welcoming festival-goers of all ages, a first in 2025.
"It's super important," Long says. "I'm a native Arizonan, born and raised, and when I was a kid, even in my early 20s, I could hardly scrounge up $10 to see a show. Having the free element makes it accessible and equitable for a lot of people. I want a 16-year-old to show up that has never seen live music before and be able to walk into a fully curated art show and see some really rad musicians that we’ve handpicked over the past couple of months.”
Rocket Space, the TAMC-led all-ages venue for the festival, is a creative hub of artists and art activists who foster events. It's just down the sidewalk from Yucca Tap Room in Danelle Plaza, at the corner of Southern and Mill avenues.
Jacqueline Swan, TAMC's executive business director and board president, says the debut of the all-ages dimension of Tempe Noise Takeover is core to the organization's mission of creating free spaces for artists and musicians to experiment and perform.
“Also, as a local who has watched all the great all-ages venues that I went to (as a youth) close, it's really fun," Swan says.
The key players love being involved with TNT, and that enthusiasm spreads. Bradley, Long, and their selection committee compatriots Mark Glick (of AJJ and Celleste, who will play Saturday night at Rocket Space) and Brandon Wilson (The Cause of Depression, playing at Yucca Tap Room on Friday night) radiated excitement when discussing the lineup and how much they love supporting the local scene.
“Phoenix has always kind of had this built-in self-loathing, like somehow we don’t think our music scene is as good as others, but I’m over that," Bradley says. "We have to stop doing that negative self-talk, even though we are producing art as good as most other places. Hopefully (Tempe Noise Takeover) will do a little to dispel that."
Glick got involved because of his friendship with Long and Bradley. He was hanging out at Bradley's vintage store, King Pigeon, when Bradley pitched Glick on helping out. "I jumped at the opportunity,” Glick says.
For Wilson, it was a submission by his band, The Cause of Depression, for the 2024 version of the Tempe Noise Pop Takeover.
“It's a romantic story," he says, laughing. "We found out about the fest and we just submitted ourselves. We thought it was an interesting concept. It was a free festival, circled around showcasing what the local Arizona music scene has to offer. It's also a benefit festival where we get to donate proceeds to an organization of our choice every year. We thought it was a great opportunity for us to get in the mix."
Long and Bradley went on a stealth mission to check out The Cause of Depression live. Bradley approached Wilson directly after the set to tell him the band was in for 2024. A friendship began to form.
“Our constant running joke is Joan of Arkansas and The Cause of Depression just essentially play every show together that we end up booking," Wilson says. "So, this year, when they wanted to start getting things rolling for the fest, E.P. came up to me and he said, ‘Hey, I would love for you to be involved. I want you to pick some bands. I want you to help make some decisions. I want you to run a venue for me.' I was honored."
Between the four, they managed to pare 100 submissions down to 40 bands for the festival. The lineup will showcase new bands alongside Valley favorites like Snailmate, Batter the Drag, Scorpion Vs. Tarantula and the venerable Phoenix Afrobeat Orchestra. Maybe even more impressive: Not one band balked at their set time once the schedule was set. And everyone plays Tempe Noise Takeover for free.
“I'm looking forward to the feeling of community that this event conjures," Glick says. "We made a point to ask artists across a ton of varying genres, so these few days should feel like a slice of Phoenix as a whole coming together for a good cause."
Here's one recommendation on how to cut that perfect slice:
To get your maximum rock on while also impressing your pedometer, check out skate punk troubadour Rad Pinckard at Rocket Space at 7 p.m., then head to Time Out Lounge for the Devo-esque electronic weirdness of Analog Monsters (7:30-8 p.m.). Then bounce back to Danelle Plaza to scope out The Cause of Depression and Strelitzia from 9:30 p.m. to 10:45 p.m., back to back. Then pick your poison: Scorpion Vs. Tarantula will bring blistering punk 'n' roll to Yucca while DOMS does proto-punk right at Time Out Lounge. Live Longer Burn Everything and Goya will close out Yucca with heavy-hitting jams.
Tempe Noise Takeover happens on Friday, September 5th, and Saturday, September 6, 2025, at Rocket Space, Time Out Lounge, and Yucca Tap Room in Tempe, Arizona. Admission is free. Rocket Space is all-ages, and Time Out Lounge and Yucca Tap Room are 21+. Music starts at 7 p.m. on Friday and 4 p.m. on Saturday. There is also an art show at Rocket Space on both days.
For the last few years, E.P. Bradley and his wife and bandmate, Kayla Long, have been putting together an absolute gem of a free local music festival, and this year, it's bigger and better than ever. Tempe Noise Takeover (soon to be the well-known Valley acronym, TNT) has risen from the ashes of Tempe Noise Pop Takeover thanks to another organization saying, “Hey now…. ‘Tempe Noise Pop Takeover’ sounds a little too much like our name,” (It didn’t), and getting all legal. The best part about it is how gosh-darned excited literally everyone New Times spoke to about the event.
If a free music festival wasn’t good enough, there is also an art exhibition at two venues. Proceeds from the event, including a nice portion of the liquor sales at Time Out Lounge and Yucca Tap Room, will be headed to local nonprofit organization One-n-ten, which provides essential support to LGBTQ+ youth. Rock out, do good and get your steps in while feeding your soul. What could be better on a Friday and Saturday night in Tempe?
Somewhere, a mathematician is devising a formula proving that multiplying the enthusiasm a promotion team has for an event (F) by the talent of the bands involved (U) and the proximity of the venues (N) offers a measure of an event's fun. Stats never lie, so it must be true.
For those who are already sold on the concept, three Tempe venues are hosting a total of 40 bands (give or take, you know how bands are) on Friday, Sept. 5, starting at 7 p.m. and Saturday, Sept. 6, beginning at 4 p.m. The participating venues are Yucca Tap Room (21+), Time Out Lounge (21+), and Rocket Space (all ages). Google Maps guesstimates that you can walk between the three venues in about five minutes, but Google definitely does not consider stopping to say hi to friends or checking out the art in the venues.
Tempe Noise Takeover festival rocked the Yucca Tap Room from Sept. 6 to 8, 2024, to support the Abortion Fund of Arizona.
Neil Schwartz Photography
“We did a thing called the Big Ass Boom Box in Portland (starting in 2014)," says Bradley, who is also a member of the band, Joan of Arkansas, and will be playing the festival on Saturday night. "We did about five of those, and we basically wanted to see how we could make a free festival. I wanted to make a thing where, you know, we were going to promote the hell out of it, get a good crowd, and get bands some good exposure."
While Tempe Noise Takeover is a labor of love for Bradley and Long, they realized that for the festival to grow from where it began in 2023, they needed help. Building a free festival takes time, money and dedication, and the duo, who recently got married before Joan of Arkansas played a celebratory set on Aug. 2 at the Yucca, have enlisted several friends, as well as the Tempe Arts and Music Coalition (TAMC) and Coven PHX. With enough help, mountains can be moved.
Critical to the shared vision: welcoming festival-goers of all ages, a first in 2025.
"It's super important," Long says. "I'm a native Arizonan, born and raised, and when I was a kid, even in my early 20s, I could hardly scrounge up $10 to see a show. Having the free element makes it accessible and equitable for a lot of people. I want a 16-year-old to show up that has never seen live music before and be able to walk into a fully curated art show and see some really rad musicians that we’ve handpicked over the past couple of months.”
Rocket Space, the TAMC-led all-ages venue for the festival, is a creative hub of artists and art activists who foster events. It's just down the sidewalk from Yucca Tap Room in Danelle Plaza, at the corner of Southern and Mill avenues.
Jacqueline Swan, TAMC's executive business director and board president, says the debut of the all-ages dimension of Tempe Noise Takeover is core to the organization's mission of creating free spaces for artists and musicians to experiment and perform.
“Also, as a local who has watched all the great all-ages venues that I went to (as a youth) close, it's really fun," Swan says.
The key players love being involved with TNT, and that enthusiasm spreads. Bradley, Long, and their selection committee compatriots Mark Glick (of AJJ and Celleste, who will play Saturday night at Rocket Space) and Brandon Wilson (The Cause of Depression, playing at Yucca Tap Room on Friday night) radiated excitement when discussing the lineup and how much they love supporting the local scene.
“Phoenix has always kind of had this built-in self-loathing, like somehow we don’t think our music scene is as good as others, but I’m over that," Bradley says. "We have to stop doing that negative self-talk, even though we are producing art as good as most other places. Hopefully (Tempe Noise Takeover) will do a little to dispel that."
Glick got involved because of his friendship with Long and Bradley. He was hanging out at Bradley's vintage store, King Pigeon, when Bradley pitched Glick on helping out. "I jumped at the opportunity,” Glick says.
For Wilson, it was a submission by his band, The Cause of Depression, for the 2024 version of the Tempe Noise Pop Takeover.
“It's a romantic story," he says, laughing. "We found out about the fest and we just submitted ourselves. We thought it was an interesting concept. It was a free festival, circled around showcasing what the local Arizona music scene has to offer. It's also a benefit festival where we get to donate proceeds to an organization of our choice every year. We thought it was a great opportunity for us to get in the mix."
Long and Bradley went on a stealth mission to check out The Cause of Depression live. Bradley approached Wilson directly after the set to tell him the band was in for 2024. A friendship began to form.
“Our constant running joke is Joan of Arkansas and The Cause of Depression just essentially play every show together that we end up booking," Wilson says. "So, this year, when they wanted to start getting things rolling for the fest, E.P. came up to me and he said, ‘Hey, I would love for you to be involved. I want you to pick some bands. I want you to help make some decisions. I want you to run a venue for me.' I was honored."
Between the four, they managed to pare 100 submissions down to 40 bands for the festival. The lineup will showcase new bands alongside Valley favorites like Snailmate, Batter the Drag, Scorpion Vs. Tarantula and the venerable Phoenix Afrobeat Orchestra. Maybe even more impressive: Not one band balked at their set time once the schedule was set. And everyone plays Tempe Noise Takeover for free.
“I'm looking forward to the feeling of community that this event conjures," Glick says. "We made a point to ask artists across a ton of varying genres, so these few days should feel like a slice of Phoenix as a whole coming together for a good cause."
Here's one recommendation on how to cut that perfect slice:
To get your maximum rock on while also impressing your pedometer, check out skate punk troubadour Rad Pinckard at Rocket Space at 7 p.m., then head to Time Out Lounge for the Devo-esque electronic weirdness of Analog Monsters (7:30-8 p.m.). Then bounce back to Danelle Plaza to scope out The Cause of Depression and Strelitzia from 9:30 p.m. to 10:45 p.m., back to back. Then pick your poison: Scorpion Vs. Tarantula will bring blistering punk 'n' roll to Yucca while DOMS does proto-punk right at Time Out Lounge. Live Longer Burn Everything and Goya will close out Yucca with heavy-hitting jams.
