Japanese Breakfast (aka Michelle Zauner) has cancelled her upcoming show in Rochester, New York, after the venue it was booked at committed to hosting an event for right-wing conspiracy theorists.
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The show was scheduled to take place at the Main Street Armory on Tuesday September 27, as part of a North American tour consisting of headline shows, festival appearances (such as Here And There, Austin City Limits and the Pitchfork Music Festival) and gigs opening for The National, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Florence + The Machine.
The Rochester date has been cancelled, Stereogum reports, because the Armory has decided to move ahead with its booking for the ‘Reawaken America’ tour – a travelling conference that hosts speakers known for espousing dangerous, xenophobic rhetoric and widely disproven conspiracy theories.
Among the key talking points platformed on the tour is the false theory that 2020’s US presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, and arguments against the implementation of measures to combat COVID-19. Two Rochester stops on that tour are slated to go ahead on Friday August 12 and Saturday 13 – neither are listed on the venue’s website, however several of the speakers’ own sites have them billed with tickets available.
Announcing her show’s cancellation on Twitter overnight, Zauner wrote: “We have cancelled the event because a number of people reached out letting us know they were boycotting the venue because of the Reawaken America tour. We were told the event was cancelled and later learned it was secretly still moving forward.
“It’s a picket line we support and are not interested in crossing. We are unfortunately unable to move the event to a different venue this time but we love Rochester and I am sure we will return someday soon.”
It’s a picket line we support and are not interested in crossing. We are unfortunately unable to move the event to a different venue this time but we love Rochester and I am sure we will return someday soon
— Japanese Breakfast (@Jbrekkie) July 14, 2022
At the time of writing, a petition against the ‘Reawaken America’ tour’s Rochester visit has received close to 2,000 signatures. Several of them come from key figures in the Monroe County town’s community, according to Rochester First, with legislator Mercedes Vazquez Simmons telling the publication: “We don’t want it here. We don’t want it in the City of Rochester. We don’t want it in the county of Monroe. We don’t want it in the state of New York.”
Zauner’s current North American tour continues tonight (July 15) in St. Louis, with her and her band – as well as opening act The Linda Lindas – performing at The Pageant. The stint will roll on into mid-October, before Zauner and co. embark on a run of rescheduled shows in the UK and Europe. In November, she’ll play the Primavera Sound festivals in São Paulo, Santiago and Buenos Aires – see all of her upcoming tour dates here.
Last week, Zauner revealed that she sang on ‘Part Of The Band’, the latest single by The 1975. It came after she joined Jack Antonoff‘s 1984-themed “SuperJam” at Bonnaroo, and covered Metric‘s ‘Black Sheep’ with Anamanaguchi in Brooklyn.
The post Japanese Breakfast cancels New York show at venue hosting far-right conspiracy event appeared first on NME.
