Tom Morello Announces Power to the People Festival with Springsteen, Foo Fighters, and a Generational Protest Lineup

Tom Morello has spent years weaving political urgency into heavy riffs. Now he’s giving that impulse its own stage. The Power to the People festival lands at Merriweather Post Pavilion outside Washington, D.C. on October 3 with a lineup that spans generations of protest music.

Bruce Springsteen, Foo Fighters, and Dave Matthews sit at the top of the bill. They’re joined by Joan Baez, Brittany Howard, Dropkick Murphys, Serj Tankian, Cypress Hill, Killer Mike, grandson, the Linda Lindas, and Morello himself. A crew of young musicians—Roman Morello, Revel Ian, Yoyoka Soma, Hugo Weiss—and Jack Black are also set to appear. Shepard Fairey designed the poster and will DJ. Taylor Momsen, Matt Cameron, and Darryl “DMC” McDaniels round things out.

Springsteen let the news slip onstage Wednesday night during the final show of his Land of Hope and Dreams tour, where Morello has been a regular presence. “In the future we want to keep raising our voices for hope and justice together. Tom Morello and I will be back again here in D.C. on Oct. 3 for another night of music and resistance,” he told the crowd. “We encourage you to come out and make a goddamned ruckus with us.”

The festival doesn’t arrive out of nowhere. In late January, Morello got Springsteen to deliver the first public performance of “Streets of Minneapolis” at a benefit for two people killed by I.C.E. personnel. That same throughline of turning grief into volume now structures a full day. Morello is betting that a curated summit, placed just outside the capital, can do what a single protest song can’t. It’s a lineup that treats political music not as a relic but as a live wire, handed from Baez to the Linda Lindas without much ceremony.