After nearly two decades, the iconic all-day concert will return on September 21 at D.C.’s Nationals Park, featuring bands many of its original festivalgoers grew up on.
When news broke that the region’s most famous music festival would be rising from the dead this month, it was greeted with jubilation by a generation of fans who saw some of the biggest names in alternative rock during its heyday, decades ago. But perhaps no one is looking forward to the return of the HFStival more than Crownsville resident Bob Waugh, pictured above.
After years in commercial radio, Waugh joined 99.1 FM WHFS in 1991, when the beloved station was broadcast to a cult-like following throughout the Mid-Atlantic. It’s been said that “HFS,” as it was colloquially known, was the first to play progressive bands like The Cure and R.E.M. on local airwaves, and at the time of Waugh’s arrival, they’d also launched an all-day concert in Fairfax, Virginia. In 1992, it moved to a racetrack in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, and was rebranded the HFStival. The rest is music history.
In Upper Marlboro, “It was a clusterfuck, because the access roads weren’t adequate and a lot of people couldn’t get in,” recalls Waugh, who eventually became the station’s program director. “After it was over, these guys came to us and they said, ‘You ought to think about moving this to RFK Stadium.’ And we were hesitant about that, because it held 55,000 people.”
The above portion of this story is shared with permission from our friends at Baltimore magazine. Read the rest of the story at the Baltimore magazine website.
