Progstock launches online gig series

US prog festival Progstock has announced a series of virtual live shows under the banner ProgStock Presents Virtual Series, in the wake of having to cancel this year's event.

The series launched this evening with performances from Rachel Flowers, Tiger Moth Tales and Julie Slick (Bassfest).

"The pandemic has closed music venues and brought in-person live music performances to a screeching halt," thew organiser say. "Accordingly, we have had to cancel ProgStock 2020. We don’t know how long we will have to wait before it will be truly safe to stage a festival, but we will be back!

"Meanwhile, we will be bringing music right to you with some great shows from artists performing live in their homes or home studios. The series will be presented every Saturday night, 5PM – 11PM US Eastern (9-11pm BST), starting on August 1, 2020, with some nights starting at 4PM US Eastern to accommodate artists streaming from Europe.

"The individual performances will be on the StageIt platform and are separate shows. Audience members will purchase a ticket to each performance individually, not the whole night as a block. Some shows will be 45 minutes and others will be 90, so we may have as few as three shows or as many as six on each Saturday night.

:"StageIt is all about experiencing music in the moment, duplicating the live music experience as closely as possible. You have to be there to see it, just like you would in a venue, so shows are only available on their site during the performance window. Some of our artists may choose to capture their shows and make them available later on some other service and the ProgStock Festival crew may even capture some of the shows – with artist permission, of course – but the shows will not be available on StageIt outside the show window."

The rest of the program will feature:

Saturday, August 8: Markus Reuter of Stick Men, Jean Pageau of Mystery, Jimmy Keegan of Pattern-Seeking Animals, Paul Bielatowicz of Carl Palmer Band, Dennis Atlas of Initiator and Arch Allies

Saturday, August 15: Frogbelly and Symphony, Gabriel (Gabriel Agudo), Andre Cholmondeley or Project/Object, Bob Richardson of Cell15

Saturday, August 22: IO Earth Acoustic, The Holzman/Getter Collective, Bele Beledo, Mile Marker Zero, McNally Waters

Saturday, August 29: Melanie Mau and Martin Schnella, Potter's Daughter and one or two more TBA

Buy tickets.

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.