The best and worst of Innings Fest 2025

Every year, we make our way to Innings Fest while being of two distinct minds. The first is that we'll have fun, enjoy great music and soak up the early spring vibes. The second is that things will go wrong and/or suck outright, and we'll be generally peeved.

The 2025 Innings Festival was further proof of this very dichotomy. We loved how bands used every second of their sets — only to hate having to walk through more of that allergy-inducing dust. Similarly, as much as we liked the pop-up shops and free naloxone, we were irked something fierce by the steep prices and extra talkative crowds.

That's the nature of a long-running beast like Innings, and you take the good with the bad. On the upside, there's often more to love than hate, and there's something therapeutic about actively disliking certain things.

Here's the best and worst of Innings Fest 2025, along with more pictures from the event.

The worst — or the best?: No press tent

It takes so little to make a humble journalist feel appreciated. The press area at Innings was an annual boon to our souls. Sure, it was only a tent set up in a parking lot with tables, folding chairs, Wi-Fi and free water and fruit snacks, but in the midst of the heat and the dust and the noise and the crowds, it was a place where one could rest, regroup and literally recharge on long festival days. When the message came that there would be no press tent and working media would get access to the VIP areas instead, truth be told, we were not happy. How would we get through the festival without our little oasis? The answer: Just fine, and in some ways, better than before. The point of covering a music festival is to watch the artists perform, and having access to VIP made that much easier. We still got free water — and sodas! — and although VIP was busy, it was far less chaotic and crowded than GA. The fact is, things change and we make the best of it. Still, a thought for next year: More shaded areas in VIP, please. Jennifer Goldberg

Best: The opportunistic kayakers

The thing about hosting your festival at a beach park is that you inventively invite other guests. However, these kayakers (and one dude on a paddle board with a cooler) weren’t exactly the nuisance you might have expected. Sure, there were iffy feelings involved about them getting to see your fave bands for free. Until, of course, you realize they’re 100 feet from the back of the stage, and they have to balance and row the whole time. Still, their increased presence this year felt like a positive — a weird little gimmick that just adds to the "story" of Innings and makes the fest feel better connected to its host city. (Innings has long struggled with this aspect, and has never meaningfully offered spots to local artists.) That, and it gave bands something to connect with and comment on as much as it was a bit of added entertainment seeing who might capsize first. (No one did, for better or worse.) Fests are more than the music, food and booze, and some little element like this go a long way to making these events feel warm and familiar and part what makes the Valley so unique. Long may these freeloaders swim. Chris Coplan

The worst: Food prices (and prices in general)

We understand capitalism. We understand inflation and profit margins and all the rest of the things we learned in Econ 101. But God in heaven, shit is so expensive at Innings. Quite apart from the hundreds of dollars it takes to even get in the door, it’s really expensive to have a good time at the festival. Sure, folks in VIP have money to spend, but does it mean they’re cool with a $24 pizza or $17 noodles on top of a $850 ticket? (Spoiler alert: no.) Add in parking, drinks (even the nonalcoholic kind), merch — people are starting to get priced out, and there’s zero indication that things will be better next year. We know that options such as bringing a water bottle and avoiding souvenir purchases can drop one’s overall costs. But the fact is that Innings is a special event and one that people don’t necessarily want to approach in such a bare-bones manner. If they can’t afford the weekend, they may end up just skipping the ticket. JG

Worst: The endless dirt sea

The trade off for day-drinking and then watching Fall Out Boy in a field is the dust. It’s bound to happen, and each year you do the mental math to make sure a fun afternoon/evening is worth a few dirt boogers. Even still, 2025 just felt even more dusty than usual. There was a gentleman spraying the grass during the early part of day one, and while I have no idea why he had to, it seemed to have made things worse. Because by the time of Incubus on Friday, huge dust clouds were being kicked up every time the ginormous audience migrated en masse. Factor in the moderate allergy conditions for that day, and it felt like breathing in loose rocks for a big portion of the first day. None of this is the fault of organizers per say, but it’s still one of those unintended aspects that colors your experience and makes it hard to really seize the day in full. It wasn’t as bad as the rain and mud from Zona Fest 2022, but all that dirt did make it harder to move, dance and breath as you made your way across the sizable festival grounds. Hey, Tempe, maybe AstroTurf for next year? CC

Best: Bands utilized their hour-long sets

I’ll give it to Innings: The fest is always pretty generous with everyone's set times. Sure, some of that’s because they only have nine bands performing a day, but a solid hour for pretty much each act means a lot when you’re trying to dazzle existing fans and recruit new hearts and minds. This year, it seemed like every band responded in kind by making the most of their set. The Kills, for instance, got to show the diversity of their stripped down rock by going the full distance. Meanwhile, Beck (who got closer to 75 minutes) used his time to bounce between hits and deep cuts while showing off his singular charm. Other sets were very much in the same vein, and it made each performance feel bigger, bolder and more about fostering connection through music than, say, showing off the fest's star power. This is a music fest, after all, and it was nice to know we got all the jam sessions and dance parties that folks paid to see. CC

The best: The Zia Records pop-up

How do we love the annual Zia Records pop-up shop at Innings Festival? Let us count the ways. 1. In the midst of a very corporate event, Zia is a most-welcome and familiar local face. 2. The tightly curated selection of records, CDs and tapes is a joy to browse, yielding new and used gems from festival artists, Phoenix bands and others. 3. Zia’s baseball-themed merch is way cheaper — and cooler, in our humble opinion — than official festival gear. 4. We tend to get overheated, overstimulated and overcrowded at Innings, but the Zia tent is always a shaded, mellow space where we can zone out, flip through the bins and take a couple of minutes away from festival madness. JG

Worst: Yappy crowds

Let’s caveat this by saying that we're not total buzzkills. People pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars to be at these fests, and they deserve to commune and celebrate however they see fit. That said, you all should maybe consider zipping your lips a little more often. Whether it was three tech bros talking their portfolios over Incubus, or someone debating the nuances of bass fishing to the sounds of Beck, too many folks paid less attention to the music and more attention to themselves. If you can’t do it for the decency of others, then ask why you’d want to waste $850 (and often more) when you could have the same convo at a local bar for $70. Maybe this is just a generational difference (I’m nearing 40), but it’s one change that I’ll fight against forever because these events should always be about the music. Heck, I’ll take 1 million annoying dancing hippies over one group of loudmouths because at least the hippies are there for good enough reasons. I’d say treat these events like the movies, but most of y’all have ruined those, too. CC

The best: Free naloxone

If you don’t think that people are doing drugs at festivals, you’re adorably naive. (And we don’t mean cannabis.) For 2025, Innings Festival once again partnered with This Must Be the Place, an overdose prevention nonprofit, to hand out free naloxone (an overdose-reversal drug) and educate attendees on the dangers of fentanyl and other opioids. A stop at the booth yielded a friendly, nonjudgmental conversation and a potentially life-saving packet of naloxone that we’ll bring with us the next time we go to a big music event. In a perfect world, there’d be no need for organizations like This Must Be the Place. In this one, however, we’re awfully glad they exist. JG