Motion City Soundtrack Focus on Fun, Not Finances for Holiday Popsickle Festival

For the past few years, Motion City Soundtrack have been putting on shows in their home base of Minneapolis during the Christmas season. As the holidays draw near, the pop-punk quintet has decided to take their winter show to the next level and turn it into the Popsickle Festival, the band's first-ever concert of that ilk.

"We've always liked music festivals, and there's not a lot going on in the festival format because it's cold outside," Motion City Soundtrack guitarist and co-founder Joshua Cain tells Spinner. "We thought it'd be a really cool idea to turn our holiday show into this multiple bands, multiple venue rooms kind of thing and just see what happens."

Since Minneapolis will be less than tropical by the Dec. 18 event, fans can stay warm inside the city's legendary venue First Avenue. While the band is excited about experimenting with this indoor plan, Cain admits that not having the event outside can be limiting. "You'd go back and forth between those rooms, so not everybody in the main room will see the bands in the small room," he says. "The venue can only hold a certain amount of people so there's only a certain amount of tickets. It's not a Lollapalooza at this point. Only 1,800 people can actually come [in]."

The Popsickle Festival will feature the event's hosts alongside Minus the Bear, Foxy Shazam and Gold Motel, as well as local acts like Gospel Gossip and Take Cover. "We're going to pull locally, give these people to play in front of some people, have fun and promote a show," Cain says.

Since Motion City Soundtrack have already played in the Twin Cities earlier this year, the band is keeping ticket prices at $22.50 each. "Part of it is that we just played in Minneapolis and we felt so bad digging into everybody's wallets," Cain says. "This isn't about Motion City Soundtrack making money at this point, so we're paying bands that we can pay well and try to play a show and have fun and hopefully it works out. It's more like doing it for the art and less about making it a profitable thing."

Rather than worry about future expansion, the band is content with making sure Popsickle is the best festival it can be.

"It's something we can have in the future as we do other things," Cain says. "This may not even be something Motion City Soundtrack plays [in the future]. We just wanted something that we can try out and see if it worked out well."

Motion City Soundtrack are currently touring the US with Say Anything and Saves the Day. Tickets to the Popsickle Festival are on sale now.