Nine years after Metro Times stopped producing it, the Hamtramck Blowout came back. The 2024 reboot ran March 1 and 2 across 16 Hamtramck venues with 150-plus bands, no corporate sponsor, and a wristband price low enough to be embarrassing for a festival of that scale. Twenty bucks.
The whole weekend. The Blowout has done a few lives. It started in 1998 as a Detroit Music Awards fundraiser organized by two Metro Times employees, Chris Handyside and Brian Boyle, who pulled 74 bands into six Hamtramck bars and accidentally booked Eminem and the White Stripes before either was Eminem or the White Stripes.
The festival grew into a four-day event spanning multiple cities, then died in 2015 after Metro Times let it drift. A grassroots stand-in called the Hamtramck Music Fest ran from 2016 to 2022 before its organizers stepped back. Then a long pause.
The 2024 version is a fundraiser for the Hamtramck Labor Day Festival, run by the same volunteer team. Konrad Maziarz, a Labor Day Festival co-chair, has framed the goal as putting the event back in the hands of musicians. He's not a musician himself.
Most of the rest of the committee is. The 2024 lineup leaned into the kind of bands the original Blowout used to break: Craig Brown Band, Duende!, Idiot Kids, Shadow Show. Performances ran from happy hour through 2 a.m. across Painted Lady, New Dodge, Outer Limits, Ant Hall, Ghost Light, and a dozen other rooms within walking distance.
The format hasn't changed in 26 years. You buy a wristband, you wander, you commit to one room and then break that commitment three songs in. Attendance held.
Bars hit capacity by Friday night. The opening party at Fowling Warehouse drew people who hadn't been in Hamtramck since the last time the Blowout existed. The fundraising target for the Labor Day Festival was met without anyone having to explain what the Labor Day Festival is.
Two days, sixteen rooms, a hundred and fifty bands. The reboot worked. The 2025 edition expanded.
Various venues across Hamtramck. Wristbands sold at Fowling Warehouse and participating venues.
