Tom Morello has spent decades treating the electric guitar as a bullhorn, so nobody expected his inaugural Power to the People gathering to run like a typical commercial festival. Staged on Saturday, October 3, at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, the event was designed to pull musicians, activists, community organizers, and ticket buyers into the same room around themes of peace, justice, and collective social change. What made the day distinct on stage was how quickly the bill abandoned conventional set boundaries in favor of loose, generational handoffs.
Organizers had begun assembling the roster back in May, confirming Bruce Springsteen, Foo Fighters, Joan Baez, System Of A Down frontman Serj Tankian, Dave Matthews, Brittany Howard, Dropkick Murphys, Jack Black, Cypress Hill, and Killer Mike. A second wave of announcements pulled in veteran rock players, bringing Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler, Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian, and Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready into the fold. Once the gates opened, the programming steered hard toward collaborative jams rather than isolated performances.
Jack Black surfaced across the lineup throughout the afternoon. During one early highlight, he fronted a version of Black Sabbath's War Pigs alongside Butler, Morello's son Roman, and Scott Ian's son Revel. Black reappeared later for a collision of rap and hard rock, joining Darryl "DMC" McDaniels, Chuck D of Public Enemy, Cypress Hill, Morello, and Ian to tackle Aerosmith's Walk This Way.
Foo Fighters handled the main rock weight of the afternoon. Dave Grohl and company ran through a set heavy on recognizable anthems, pulling out Times Like These, All My Life, The Pretender, My Hero, Best of You, and Everlong. They branched out with a rendition of Mose Allison's Young Man Blues, the track famously electrified by The Who, and pulled Morello out to share stage volume on a cover of KISS's Rock and Roll All Nite. In between songs, Grohl spoke directly to the crowd, talking about his past work campaigning for former Secretary of State John Kerry and shouting out his friend Jack in the audience.
The evening ended with an escalating series of collaborative encores. Bruce Springsteen walked out alone first, opening the sequence with Streets Of Minneapolis. Joan Baez joined him next to sing Bob Dylan's Chimes Of Freedom, followed by Morello taking the stage with them for The Clash's Clampdown and The Ghost of Tom Joad. The circle kept widening from there. Dave Matthews and Nathaniel Rateliff walked on to perform Creedence Clearwater Revival's Fortunate Son with the group, and Grohl took lead vocals on Neil Young's Rockin' In The Free World. By the time the finale wrapped, every artist on the bill stood side by side to work through a closing medley of Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land and John Lennon's Power to the People.
Behind the marathon setlists, the festival carried a direct civic purpose. Organizers directed a cut of all general admission sales, as well as the total net proceeds from VIP passes, straight to VoteRiders and HeadCount. VoteRiders helps citizens obtain the identification needed to cast their ballots, while HeadCount sets up voter registration and education tables inside concert venues and cultural gatherings nationwide.
