This Garden City festival lured thousands. In ‘hard decision,’ it’s been nixed this year

An annual three-day music festival in Garden City will not happen this year.

Flipside Fest, a multi-venue event normally held in September, will go on hiatus in 2024, according to organizer Duck Club Entertainment. The plan is to bring it back in 2025.

In an email, Duck Club cofounder Megan Stoll called it “an extremely hard decision.”

Flipside Fest was launched in 2022 by Duck Club, which also produces the larger Treefort Music Fest each year in Boise. Last year’s Flipside featured “80ish local and touring bands, live murals by local artists, and immersive on-foot exploration of the Surel Mitchell Live-Work-Create District in Garden City,” according to its website. Headliners included The Walkmen and The Regrettes. Daily attendance was about 2,000 people, according to Duck Club CEO Eric Gilbert, for a combined total of roughly 6,000.

Why is Flipside canceling the party in 2024? “To put it simply, the Duck Club team needs a bit of a summer break,” a press release said. “In the last four years, the Duck Club team has navigated the pandemic, held two Treefort Music Fests in six months, moved Treefort Music Fest Main Stage to Julia Davis Park, introduced and produced two years of Flipside Fest, opened Treefort Music Hall and Hap Hap Lounge, took over the El Korah Shrine building and transformed it into the two venues that make up Shrine Social Club, and grew the internal team to double its previous size. It has been a magical whirlwind of navigating new territory and seeing longtime dreams come true.

“Duck Club will continue hosting shows at a number of venues throughout the summer and will produce the Alive After Five free concert series on the Grove Plaza with the Downtown Boise Association as well as some seasonal surprises … .”