The XPoNential Music Festival lineup is here. Who’s playing Wiggins Park this year?
With no shows at the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion, this year's XPNfest with be a cozier affair.
The 2023 XPoNential Music Festival is returning to Wiggins Park on the Camden Waterfront in September.
The 19 acts announced (so far) include Americana string band Old Crow Medicine Show, indie duo Tegan and Sara, and singer-pianist Bruce Hornsby and his band, the Noisemakers. Nashville country-rocker Margo Price, New York quintet the Hold Steady, sterling singer-songwriter Allison Russell, and ribald Philly rock and soul band Low Cut Connie, are also on the bill.
This year’s 30th version of the music fest curated by University of Pennsylvania adult alternative radio station WXPN-FM (88.5) will take place Sept. 22-24.
It will be staged entirely at the fest’s usual Wiggins Park site. No shows were booked, in partnership with Live Nation, atFreedom Mortgage Pavilion, where the War On Drugs and Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats were headliners in 2022.
“Our partnership with the venue next door has been worked out year by year and has taken on many different variations,” the station’s general manager Roger LaMay said. “This year, it was mutually decided to keep all the performances at Wiggins Park to celebrate the 30th festival in its primary home.”
This year’s lineup also includes guitar sensation Celisse, New Orleans-based Haitian American songwriter Leyla McCalla, nuevo disco trio Say She She, country-blues songwriter Sunny War, alt-rock family band Bailen, and Brooklyn rockers Sammy Rae & Friends.
Along with Adam Weiner’s Low Cut Connie, the XPoNential bill will feature at least six more Philly acts including Don McCloskey, Julia Pratt, Nik Greeley & the Operators, Moustapha Noumbissi, Mobbluz, and Velvet Rouge.
The absence of big-name headliners in the capacious pavilion next door this year does not mean the festival intends to downsize going forward, according to organizers. More acts will be added on Wiggins Park’s River and Marina stages in the coming weeks.
Tickets for XPoNential Music Festival go on sale to WXPN members on Thursday, April 20, at the festival’s website, xpnfest.org. Tickets will be available to the general public via that site at 10 a.m. Friday, April 21.