Flying Island 2025 Lineup Includes Tortoise, John Carroll Kirby, & American Analog Set

Last year, I heard a lot of chatter about how music festivals were shutting down because the format is becoming less and less sustainable. The hype around these gatherings might be dying, but that analysis seems to be more focused on trends and fleeting interests of the masses. For example, people have been consistently warning me that the vinyl-collecting bubble was going to burst for at least a decade. As someone who’s been collecting for over 30 years, I can’t take concerns like that too seriously. Will records drop back to reasonable prices again? Will people dump their collections in droves at rock-bottom prices? That actually sounds great to me. A lot of these trends are perversions, mutations, and appropriations of things that were initially formed for reasons beyond simple trends and monetization. Regardless of how prevalent AI becomes and continues to infiltrate our societies, there will always be a yearning for real interaction and tangible possessions. Live music will always have a place, because it always has. It was the small indie labels that kept vinyl in production for all those years after being discarded by the majority of society, until the hipster resurgence ushered the Urban Outfitters set into the fold. The truth is that, while some larger, well-known festivals have chosen to pack it up, we’ve seen positive shifts with smaller, more intimate startups being formed. The latest to catch our attention is a little festival titled Flying Island out of Marfa, Texas.

For years, the festival game has moved into more mainstream, corporate directions. Look at the backlash to SXSW becoming a playground for defense contractors, or compare the early jam band and backpack rap-leaning lineup of the first Bonnaroo lineup, which featured Les Claypool, Ween, Jurassic 5, and Bela Fleck, to the Avril Lavigne, Luke Combs, and Olivia Rodrigo roster that was scheduled this year. Lately, there has been a noticeable sea change toward more intimate and experiential festivals. Sasquatch! finally called it quits in 2018, only for the organizers to resurface with the more family-friendly THING festival the following year. Chicago‘s Pitchfork Festival scrapped things in 2024, but this September will see P4K Fest founder, Mike Reed, throwing the jazzy, experimental multi-venue Sound & Gravity festival in the Windy City. Not everyone is trying to throw another Coachella. Instead, small startups are zeroing in on their particular niche to form their own communities around. There’s a need for this and, as Dr. Ian Malcom so famously expressed in Jurassic Park, “Life, uh, finds a way.” 

As a rule, I don’t mess with Texas, but Marfa has intrigued me for quite a while. From 2014 until 2019, the small, far West Texas town in the high desert of the Trans-Pecos hosted a festival called Marfa Myths. A joint project of the Brooklyn label, Mexican Summer, and the contemporary arts foundation, Ballroom Marfa, it was self-described as “an annual music festival and multidisciplinary cultural program,” that focused on “bringing[ing] together a diversity of emerging and established artists and musicians to work creatively and collaboratively across music, film, and visual arts contexts.” I never made it out to experience it myself, but collaborative recordings between artists were a regular occurrence, and the final installment boasted names like electronic and avant-jazz composer, Anette Peacock, and the late-60s Swedish psych-prog outfit Träd, Gräs och Stenar. I’m not sure if Marfa Myths ever officially called it quits, but if nothing else, the pandemic essentially put the kibosh on it, rendering it dormant ever since.

Last year, the 4-Day Flying Island Music Festival held its inaugural year, showcasing various food pop-ups and an impressive music lineup that included Os Mutantes, Bill Callahan, Steve Gunn, Sessa, and Khun Narin. Created to fill the void created by the El Cosmico Trans-Pecos Festival of Music + Love going on hiatus, Flying Island organizers sought to provide something of significance to a community that was likely to suffer a cultural and financial hit with the loss of an event that generates one of the town’s biggest tourism weekends of the year. According to the most recent census, Marfa has a population of around 1,600, meaning that exponentially more people will attend an event like this than live within the entire city limits. With the announcement of another stellar lineup, it looks like the festival is here to stay for the time being.

Flying Island 2025 will be held from October 23 – 26th across various venues in Marfa. The initial lineup announcement includes standouts like Tortoise, John Caroll Kirby, American Analog Set, Rich Ruth, and Egyptian Lover with the promise of “more to come.” This might not be of interest to a lot of people, but the listed photo policy states, “You are welcome to take photos and video for personal use.” Tickets for all 4 days are only $175, and kids 12 and under are free. As a parent who has brought my son to events his entire life and shoots concerts, seeing things like this in the FAQ leaves a positive impression that suggests a festival that is more about community, art, and expression than getting shitfaced in a campground or parking lot.  As far as festivals go, this looks to be one worth traveling for.

For tickets and more information, check out FlyingMarfa.com