Neon City Festival Nabs All-American Rejects Following When We Were Young Kerfuffle

By Scott Roeben, on October 18 2024
2 min read 1 comment
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If you love music festival drama, we’ve got you.

First, The All-American Rejects bailed on a popular music festival, When We Were Young (Oct. 19-21, 2024), presumably due to “a management change” in the festival. Now, we hear the band has been picked up by a new Las Vegas festival, Neon City Festival (Nov. 22-24, 2024).

Note: For the purposes of this story, we are going to pretend we know who The All-American Rejects are. Just play along.

The last time The All-American Rejects played Fremont Street, some people turned up. Here’s the setlist.

Here’s the quick version.

The All-American Rejects are an American rock band known for their blend of pop-punk and emo with hits like “Swing, Swing” and “Gives You Hell.” The band consists of Tyson Ritter (lead vocals), Nick Wheeler (lead guitar), Mike Kennerty (rhythm guitar) and Chris Gaylor (drums).

The Rejects were scheduled to play at When We Were Young, but suddenly dropped out for reasons that were fairly cryptic.

Everybody tries to play nice in public statements, but read on for the straight scoop.

Basically, festival organizers wanted The Rejects to play their entire self-titled album, “All-American Rejects,” and the band wanted to play their greatest hits. So, The Rejects basically said, “You’re not the boss of us,” and bailed.

Fans were disappointed. The upstart Neon City Festival saw an opportunity and seized it.

The Neon City Festival hasn’t officially confirmed the booking of The Rejects, but when has that ever stopped us from sharing scoop?


The Neon City Festival has already had some drama. It originally announced rapper Macklemore as a headliner, but dropped him like a hot potato after some ill-considered anti-American dumbassery at a concert in Seattle, in addition to his dabbling in blatant antisemitism.

Macklemore’s cancelation left a gap in the Neon City Festival line-up and freed up a reported $400,000 to find alternative acts.

Downtown’s Neon City Festival was born from the crucible of the financial trainwreck of last year’s F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix. While the race benefited a handful of casinos, the vast majority were hammered by the event.

To prevent a wholesale mutiny by downtown casinos, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority donated $1 million to the Neon City Festival which originated with Derek Stevens, owner of Circa, but is a rare collaboration between all the casinos downtown, even those that are not part of the Fremont Street Experience.

Adjust the kerning and The Rejects will slide right in.

The Neon City Festival will also fill a void left by the Life is Beautiful music festival. In September 2024, the new owners of the festival, Rolling Stone, cobbled together a half-assed attempt at a festival, Life is Beautiful: A Big Beautiful Block Party, but it was by many accounts a dud.

The Neon City Festival’s dates sit right atop F1’s events, and will provide visitors who have no interest in F1 (hint: most of them) a free event with dozens of bands and no price gouging. It’s downtown, after all.

The final and complete line-up for the Neon City Festival is expected by the end of Oct. 2024. Our fingers are still crossed for the Thompson Twins.

Update (10/22/24): The Neon City Festival has announced its culinary offerings. See more.

You’re covered. There are also lots of great restaurants downtown.