The most honest branding for a new nostalgia trip might be its name: Dial Up Festival. The three-stop event, announced this week, doesn’t just reference the late-’90s and early-2000s — it rebuilds a touring package around the acts that soundtracked the era’s merge of hip-hop crossover and sun-bleached pop-rock. Headliners Nelly and Sugar Ray will anchor each date, with support lineups shifting between regions.
Produced by CODA Entertainment, the festival opens November 7 at Castaic Lake Park outside Los Angeles. Lit, Alien Ant Farm, and Unwritten Law join the bill. The Phoenix-area stop on November 21 at Wild Horse Pass Festival Grounds swaps in Smash Mouth, Warren G, and Paul Wall alongside returning acts Alien Ant Farm and Unwritten Law. A final Fort Worth date at Panther Island Pavilion on December 12 adds Buckcherry and a holiday-party theme — seasonal cocktails, festive decor, and a Santa appearance. It’s a loose, unsubtle assembly of the dial-up-generation’s heavy rotation.
The booking logic is clear enough. Nelly’s Country Grammar run — “Ride Wit Me,” “Hot in Herre,” the Kelly Rowland duet “Dilemma” — made him one of the decade’s defining commercial forces. Sugar Ray’s string of radio staples (“Fly,” “Every Morning,” “Someday”) kept Mark McGrath a video-countdown fixture. Together they represent two pillars of the TRL moment: hip-hop’s mainstream explosion and the lighter rock that filled the gap between alternative’s decline and streaming’s rise.
Beyond the lineup, the festival leans into signifiers of the period: themed bars, interactive games, photo installations meant to recall disposable cameras and VHS rentals. The pitch is a time capsule, aimed at reuniting audiences who once traded AIM screen names. Whether this translates into a sustainable touring concept or a one-season experiment remains to be seen, but the curation is less about rediscovery than recognition. Dial Up Fest knows exactly what it’s selling.
