This Saturday, April 15th, Macalester’s Program Board (PB) will be hosting this year’s SpringFest, an annual tradition that features musical performances, along with games and food trucks. The doors open this year at 1:30 p.m. and the show begins at 2 p.m., where Macalester’s own Bakermiller Pink will kick off the performances, which will run until 6 p.m. There was much anticipation this year around the lineup for SpringFest, with PB even dropping hints on their Instagram before announcing each artist. 

Maxwell Davis ’25, PB Concert and Festival Coordinator and SpringFest lead, spoke on what the process of picking the artists was like this year. 

“We select the artists based on a lot of variables,” Davis said. “First, we find a list of artists that work within our constraints, and then we will crowdsource this list with everyone on [PB] as well as other community members to make sure we have a lot of feedback. Based on the feedback, we start to make final decisions.”

Gully Boys were the first of the non-Macalester bands to be announced by PB. A band born and bred in the Twin Cities, Gully Boys music is a mix of garage, pop rock and punk, and promises to be a great show. Macalester alumni M.anifest was the next to be announced, a Ghanaian rapper who blends traditional African music with hip-hop. In fact, the night before SpringFest, Friday, April 14, PB will be hosting an event specifically for M.anifest to give some insight into his career and how studying at Macalester, and in the Twin Cities, impacted it. There will also be a Q&A session. And last, but certainly not least, SpringFest’s headliner this year will be Armani White, the rapper who went viral on TikTok for his song “Billie Eilish”. 

“My number one goal when crafting the lineup is always to make sure that we have a wide range of diversity in genres on stage throughout the day!” Davis said.

As the lead organizer of SpringFest in 2022 as well, Davis was able to reflect on last year’s success and how to make this year even better.

“We have made a couple of changes based on feedback we heard in the past,” Davis said. “We are changing the stage position slightly, will have a different selection of food trucks than we did last year and have made a couple of changes with our vendors.”

Not only is PB changing up the food – vendors will be serving Afro-Italian cuisine and crepes – but they’re also adding to the selection of games that were offered last year. 

“In addition to the music, we are going to have an arcade with an air hockey table, classic games and pinball machines,” Davis said.

Admission is free for Macalester students, just remember to bring your Mac ID for admittance. If you’d like to bring a non-Macalester guest, you can buy them a ticket for $10 using the link at the end of this article, but there are only a limited amount of guest tickets available! Any guest will need to bring a form of ID for admittance. 

Additionally, the first 500 students to arrive to SpringFest will receive a $5 voucher for the food trucks, and the first 200 students to arrive will receive a limited edition free SpringFest T-Shirt!

Whether SpringFest will be hosted on Shaw Field or in the LC Fieldhouse – the rain location – will not be announced until a few days before the event, so for more information on the specific venue and any other updates, please check the PB Instagram page: @macalester_pb. 

Guest tickets can be purchased at: 

https://secure.touchnet.com/C23333_ustores/web/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=1431&SINGLESTORE=true