This week, the Mitten Music podcast — which has long explored Michigan’s music scene — digs into summer festivals with Local Spins. It’s a good excuse for us to round up a flurry of summer music.
Talking Michigan’s Summer Festivals and Outdoor Concerts in 2025: Local Spins and Mitten Music (Courtesy Photo/Electric Forest Photo by Eric Stoike)
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The numbers alone are impressive.
There are more than 60 Michigan music festivals listed in Local Spins’ Michigan Music Festivals 2025 Guide.
Our Summer Concerts @ Michigan Venues 2025 listing boasts more than three dozen series at outdoor venues across the state, with more being added weekly.
And our Free Outdoor Community Concerts 2025 Guide — featuring schedules and lineups for summer shows pretty much every night of the week in cities across the state — has already topped more than 100 concert series for summer 2025 (and more to come).
Mitten Music and Local Spins: John Sinkevics with Jeff Wood and Ryan Malott. (Courtesy Photo)
Suffice to say, there’s no shortage of live music options this summer, something that sparked the long-running Mitten Music podcast to ask Local Spins publisher John Sinkevics to give listeners an overview of the upcoming season’s festival and concert flurry. That chat, not surprisingly, was wide-ranging.
And just in time: Country-rock singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson kicks off a summer of concerts tonight (May 10) at Meadow Brook Amphitheatre in Rochester Hills — the first of a flurry of more than 120 summer concerts booked by 313 Presents at Meadow Brook, Pine Knob Music Theatre, Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre, Comerica Park, Little Caesars Arena and Fox Theatre.
As for festivals, the first bunch of the season take place this weekend in Lansing/East Lansing: Stoopfest, Mighty Uke Day and Rock Lansing, with Buses By the Beach’s Bus Benefit in Trufant and the mammoth Movement Electronic Music Festival in Detroit rolling out on Memorial Day Weekend.
And Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park ignites its biggest concert season yet on May 30 with The Head and Heart. (View the full schedule here.)
MITTEN MUSIC: Summer Music with John Sinkevics (5/8/25)
https://www.themittenmusic.com/podcast-episodes/summer-music-john-sinkevics-localspins
VIDEO: Mitten Music’s Summer Music with John Sinkevics
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