Photo credit: Rob Blackham Having now sold over 1700 tickets for their soon-to-be-historical double headline concert at Lancaster University’s Great Hall on 19th and 20th September, the Lancastrian rockers MASSIVE WAGONS have now shared details of the opening acts, including two lucky local bands. Following in the footsteps of many world famous acts who played at the venue in the 1970s and ‘80s, the five-piece will be joined by scene heavyweights The Virginmarys (Friday) and The New Roses (Saturday). Also making their Great Hall debut will be local acts singer-songwriter Harrison Rimmer (Friday) and indie pop rockers Life In Neon (Saturday). On the upcoming shows, guitarist Adam Thistlethwaite shares: “To put on the kind of rock show that we used to dream about as teenagers in our home town is just amazing. We are so lucky to have a following that enables us to take on venues like The Great Hall, big spaces that are just built for great nights of live music, it’s a true honour! When considering special guests, it was very important for us to offer the stage to younger artists from the Lancaster area. We checked out what was out there and all agreed Life In Neon and Harrison Rimmer, who both write big songs and give big live performances, fit the bill perfectly. Our amazing fans are the kind of people that if they like something they’ll follow it until the end, we can’t wait to watch them steal the audience! So cheers to both, check them out before the show and don’t miss them! “ The selection process was coordinated by Lancaster Music Festival who have worked frequently with Massive Wagons as part of the festival’s outreach programme, with band members recently touring local primary schools to perform their anti-bullying workshops. The acts were chosen by representatives of Massive Wagons, Lancaster Music Festival, Lancaster Music Co-op, The Tap House Unsigned, Your Own Stuff and Beyond Radio. Continuing to give back to their community, Friday is also reserved for a special matinee show that’ll see the audience be made up of 10 local schools, their pupils, and teachers, in what could be a taste of their very first live rock n’ roll concert. That’s over 500 schoolchildren and 60 staff members on 11 coaches – full School Of Rock-style. Less than 100 tickets are left for the Great Hall on Friday night, but you can still be in with a chance of securing yours now from Massive Wagons’ website here: https://www.massivewagons.com/. Vocalist Baz Mills enthuses: “We have talked about wanting to put on a matinee performance for kids for ages now, we talked about this years ago, but we have just never had the available time or location to do it successfully. The Lancaster Uni shows have given us the perfect opportunity to get it done and make it a real gig experience for around 600 school children! We have always felt that kids really miss out on some great experiences around live music due to their age, cost and venue restrictions, often venues have a 14 and over age limit, and gigs mainly drag on late into the night and just aren’t a suitable environment for younger minds.” “So where are the new rock fans coming from? Rock has taken a bit of a back seat of late it seems, what better way to introduce children to guitar music than through a live music experience, music tv has all but disappeared, rock on the mainstream radio has all but disappeared, access to music magazines is smaller than ever! Ok the internet exists, but a large proportion of the internet isn’t suitable for kids either! A safe, suitable environment for under 14s to watch live music, i think it sounds like a mega idea myself and we cant wait to get it done and hopefully turn some children on to live music and in particular guitar music.” | 
