Full Four Chord Music Festival Analysis – Overall Rating: 4.5/10
On September 13th & 14th, 2025, Chewing on the Wire took to the Four Chord Music Festival in Washington, Pennsylvania, held at EQT Park, the home of the Frontier League’s Washington Wild Things Baseball Team. The festival featured bands like Bowling for Soup, Jimmy Eat World, The Wonder Years,Alkaline Trio, and was headlined by Blink 182
Festival Experience
* It was a very unique setting for a music festival, with it being in a compact, intimate setting like a Frontier League baseball stadium.
* The idea of bringing music to places that might not normally get major headlining tours (like Washington, Pennsylvania), potentially making it more accessible to the community is an additional benefit/nice little touch
* They had a lot of extras – different fun things to do such as get a tattoo from artists who were on the “Inkmaster” TV Show.
* The festival started as a DIY, with no major labels or brands initially involved, so seeing how far it’s come was pretty awesome.
* I must Say, There were many Challenges related to the facility’s preparedness for the event.
Facility and Infrastructure Issues
* Overcrowding, with crowds exceeding the stadium’s and staff’s capacity and abilities occurred throughout Saturday.
* Limited facilities: only two real bathrooms, one set of porta potties, four or five food stands, and room for only two stages.
* The layout, which forced the crowd to be between the outfield wall and home plate, mixed with tents throughout the field, made for very bad sightlines.
* Parking issues, including a limited number of parking passes and the need for many attendees to park far away (0.8 Miles – a 20 minute walk up the side of a hill), with no shuttles for ADA (or anyone else)
The overall takeaway is that while the concept of the festival was enjoyable, the facility was not prepared to host the event, leading to significant issues with overcrowding, limited facilities, and parking.
Action Items
* Improve facility preparation for future festivals: If you’re going to sell that many tickets, remove/move half the tents on the field so I can see from all the way in the back by the pitcher’s mound.
* Address parking limitations and accessibility issues: Basically, a lot of this wraps up into selling fewer tickets. If the parking lots are full (which is usually a sign the stadium as designed is at capacity, but I understand you’re utilizing the playing surface as well), and you’re going to make the rest of the people park almost a mile away, you need a shuttle service (I saw all those golf carts driving employees around *suspicious glare*)
* Increase restroom and food stand availability: you need like three more porta potty setups, and have vendors each with something else on the tents on the field – three tents were selling pizza, which, in general, I found weird, because like why are there only local (if they’re local) pizza places here, and not any other kind of food? Is that all they have in Washington? This was another thing maybe only I recognized, as I cannot eat pizza due to some of the ingredients, and I didn’t want to wait in the food lines on the concourse, meshing with the bathroom lines, both wrapping around the stadium.
* Optimize stage setup and crowd flow: this is another call back to point number 1, with not being able to see totally( even from the top of the bleachers) because there were tents in the way (pictured)
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