Earlier today, VPB Music Group announced that Nashville band Nordista Freeze would no longer perform at Rites of Spring on April 12. Freeze later confirmed this with a post on their Instagram.
The band pulled out following miscommunications regarding their contract with the VPB music group, which they explained in an interview with the Hustler.
“I had a meeting with Rites of Spring, with someone on the Music Group, in mid-January, and that’s when they proposed to me the idea of playing. And when they proposed it to me, they had mentioned a lot of things in the contract, I mean like payment…And then months go by and they begin promoting the show and I’m contacting them like, ‘Hey, is there any way I can get a contract for this?’ They’re like, ‘Oh yeah, we’ll have it to you next week.’”
When asked about the situation, VPB Music Group cited a “contract issue” as the reason for the cancellation.
“I just keep contacting them like, ‘Any update on this contract?’ Contract never comes, until two days ago, and they send me the contract and it’s all these details that we had no idea about, of course. They’re saying that they don’t want us to play in Nashville, for I believe four months. They weren’t interested in paying us. No payment at all. It said $0.00…We find out we aren’t even allowed to go to Night 2 of the festival at all. We have to pay to go to Night 2. We were shocked, and then we just contacted them and were like, ‘Hey, there must have been a mistake. We’d love to get this resolved.’ And they just weren’t interested, and they were just like, ‘Yeah, sorry, we don’t have any money left in the budget*.’”
Nordista Freeze expressed their disappointment about having to drop out of the festival.
“After airing radio ads with our name on it, a lot of our fans were really excited to come see us play and have already bought tickets, and it’s just a pretty low thing to do and we feel really hurt.”
Rites of Spring will begin tonight, April 12, with Ari Lennox at 7:30pm.
*A previous version of this article stated that Nordista Freeze knew there was money in the budget to pay for his performance. He later notified The Hustler that he didn’t know this for sure. The article has been updated to reflect this change. The Hustler regrets this error. Updated 8.45 p.m.
