“This tour is designed to be super energetic and like a party, as upbeat as possible. We all have 35 minutes, so we have to choose all the heavy-hitter songs from our catalogues, all of the fan favorites. It’s almost like a highlight reel. I actually went online and asked fans what they wanted to hear, and I truly chose the top 10 songs, so if they don’t like it, they can’t blame me,” laughs pop-rock singer/songwriter Charlotte Sands. We’re discussing the second annual idobi Radio Summer School Tour, which kicks off this coming Friday and will wrap August 10th at our very own Franklin Music Hall (Charlotte tells me she’s already planning closing night pranks!) The touring nightclub festival features Charlotte as a rotating headliner, alongside our phriend Taylor Acorn and Rain City Drive; in addition to rotating support from If Not For Me, Beauty School Dropout, and Arrows in Action; with Huddy handling opening duties, all for the price of $35 (plus taxes and fees).
“This whole team that put this together, their entire priority is that fans are able to enjoy it and afford it,” Charlotte tells me of the festival — co-founded by Kevin Lyman (Warped Tour), Eric Tobin (Hopeless Records), and Michael Kaminsky (KMGMT) and sponsored by idobi Radio and Hot Topic — during a June phone chat. In addition to the price point and volume of talent the tour is providing, Sands says that the particular lineup held a special appeal to her. “They really wanted to amplify female artists in the scene. They have two female artists in headlining slots, which can be rare in this genre,” she says, referring to our buddy and hers, Taylor Acorn, who we met last April, just prior to a sold-out headlining show at The Foundry (less than two weeks after a sold-out headlining show from Charlotte in the very same room).
Charlotte Sands features on “Final Nail,” a bonus track on Survival in Motion (Deluxe), the extended edition of Acorn’s sophomore LP, which dropped last year. “I absolutely adore Taylor! She’s become one of my closest friends. I think we’re so similar, in our personal lives and our careers… We both grew up riding horses!” says Sands of the Nashville-based pop-punk artist. But as far as a live rendition of “Final Nail” for Summer School, Charlotte tells me that’s up to Taylor: “Since our sets are a little shorter, I’m gonna leave it totally up to her and not put my wants and needs ahead of her doing what she thinks are her 10 best songs… but if we could do it, or do it on a couple dates, I would love it!” Although she does say, regardless of what happens onstage, she’s totally amped for the two of them to have some fun on the road together: “I’m so excited to talk about what to do with our outfits and what to do in this city or that city… I’m so excited to momager from the pit!”
Last month Charlotte Sands dropped “HUSH,” her latest single, which had her proclaiming, “I made this song for all the people like me who can’t decide if they’d rather be at the club or in a mosh pit and now we can do both. Start stretching, drink your water, and tell your friends it’s time for brat rock summer.” Of the origins of “brat rock,” Charlotte tells me, “It comes from so many different people. Obviously Charli xcx, which was really inspiring me last summer, but I realized how badly people need to have fun sometimes, and it doesn’t need to be that serious and that deep,” referencing the often times heavy and emotional torment of traditional emo: “It can just be about letting people escape from their realities.” She also says that there are a few artists in addition to Ms. brat that had a major influence on the song’s sound: “Bring Me The Horizon, especially their electronic sounds on their last few albums, and then I think Poppy is a really cool artist and her albums, especially the last two, have been so dynamic, with pop-leaning stuff and then really heavy rock stuff.”
While Charlotte’s upcoming jaunt has her sharing billing with six other acts, she will be providing a limited number of her biggest fans the opportunity to partake in VIP Pop Up events featuring a pre-show hang at an undisclosed location, acoustic performance, Q&A, and exclusive merch item. “Honestly, I love being able to have one-on-one conversations with people. Being on tour, it can be hard to not be able to sit and chat with people for a long time, which is my personality,” she says of the VIP experiences, which have come to be standard of her headlining shows. She also tells me that she loves to get repeat VIPs: “I know their lives and family and all of these experiences they’ve had, so it’s great to be able to catch up with these people that I’ve known for years, and also to get to meet people in real life that I’ve maybe known online for a while now. It makes the show so much more enjoyable, because you get to recognize people in the crowd and make connections, rather than just screaming in people’s faces [laughs].”
The Summer School Tour will be Charlotte’s first touring of 2025, but she has performed at a handful of festivals throughout the year, most recently last month’s Let’s Go Music Festival, where she played right before our phriends Winona Fighter (who headline The Foundry this Saturday, July 12th). She tells me the Maryland festival gave her the chance to catch up with a couple friends/collaborators, in addition to the opportunity to take in the set of the headliner, someone she and Winona Fighter both hold very dear: “I got to reunite with The Maine and do ‘Loved You A Little’ with them, and every time I get to play that song with them, it’s like one of the highlights of my life. And I got to reconnect with John Harvie [the Philly artist Sands took out on her first-ever headlining tour and even had her very first cheesesteak with at the local stop], and I got to see Third Eye Blind, which is one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.”
There are a couple massive festivals in Sands’ near future. Summer School 2025 will be taking a “field trip” for a special appearance on July 26th, when all seven acts will perform at the Long Beach edition of Vans Warped Tour (joining phriends of PHILTHY Destroy Boys, Gogol Bordello, and New Years Day), and Charlotte will also be performing at the November edition of the festival in Orlando (alongside additional PHILTHY phriends Julia Wolf, Scowl, and The Dollyrots). And she tells me she couldn’t be more excited for both weekends: “I feel so honored to get to play such a legendary festival. I grew up as a huge fan of so many of those bands, and to think of myself playing alongside so many of these legendary artists that have inspired me, it feels like such imposter syndrome sometimes [laughs].”
I can’t help myself but ask Charlotte about the inspirations behind her iconic sartorial style, which, at her last area appearance (included in the video for “spite” below) had me saying, “In oversized cargo jeans, paired with her famous electric-blue hair, [Sands] resembled the ultimate icon of aughts teen angst.” However, she admits, “No one’s ever asked me that before! I really feel so lazy about my fashion; I really look up to people who are so into fashion. That’s still something I’m trying to figure out, what my style is.” But she does tell me that her choice of wardrobe tends to be inspired by polarities: “Sometimes it’s more masculine leaning, like things that feel baggier and more comfortable, and then sometimes I wake up and wanna dress like a superhero, put on boots and run around, and look a little more feminine. It’s funny how much it can change day-to-day. It allows me to express myself and how I’m feeling on a daily basis.”
Charlotte also confesses that a lot of her inspiration comes from her fans themselves: “Honestly, I have so many people who are so creative and make things and sew things, and I feel like I can barely crop a shirt properly [laughs]… I had a fan on the Love and Other Lies Tour who stitched together a shirt from letters from different jerseys… I love when people come out dressed for a particular show!” And there may actually be extra incentive for local phans to dress up for Charlotte Sands, who I find out has a lot of familial connections to the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection, including her aunt and mom: “My mom will hunt them down and ask to take pictures with them [laughs].”
*Get your tickets here.
