[UPDATE] EXCLUSIVE: More Details Emerge For Soundwave Replacement Festival

Following on from last week's news that Devil You Know drummer John Sankey is working on brand new festival Legion in the wake of Soundwave's demise, more details have emerged, including information on the line-up, dates and an official kickstarter campaign.

Speaking in a letter to the fans supplied directly to theMusic, Sankey revealed that a number of bands have reached out to him to appear on the bill and that he hopes to start announcing the line-up this week. 

"We already have a heap of brilliant bands that have reached out to us and will have confirmations soon so, hopefully, we will be able to start announcing the line up this week," Sankey said.

"We’re going to try really hard not to drip feed the line up to you but, because this is all happening pretty quickly, it might come through in bits and pieces because we want to get you the info as soon as we have it. In terms of the lineup, I know a lot of you have asked if we’ll be supporting local, Aussie bands and you can rest assured that we’ll absolutely be doing that. There’s way too much talent in Australia to overlook."

Sankey went on to say that the kickstarter will launch this week while pledges for the campaign will be accepted from 2 January.

"We want to be really transparent with you guys and we wan’t you to know exactly where your money will be going," Sankey said of the kickstarter.

"We know its really important to everyone that they feel confident that these shows will go ahead. That’s why we’re doing the kickstarter campaign: so you can become a founding member of LEGION and pledge your support to the festival without actually handing over any money until we’re all 100% sure that we can fund it and it can go ahead."

While many fans are hoping that the festival will take place around the now-cancelled dates of Soundwave, Sankey confirmed that Legion will instead be held in March next year. 

"While we’re reaching out to a lot of the bands on the SW lineup we’re basically creating a new festival from scratch and there’s a shit load of work to do," he explained.

"We’d love to have made it happen on the same dates for you guys but it’s just not possible to get it all together in time. We want to make sure we put on the best gig possible for you so we need to allow enough time to make sure it’s awesome…at this stage we’re still nutting out the exact dates and locations but we’re still looking at all options and will be able to let you know more really soon."

Read the full letter below, as well as an exclusive video update from Sankey himself.  

Stay tuned to theMusic for more details as they become available.

"Hey guys,

There’s so much to fill you in on so I just wanted to put together a note to let you know where everything’s at.

Firstly, I just wanted to say that we have been absolutely blown away by your support! We already have a heap of brilliant bands that have reached out to us and will have confirmations soon so, hopefully, we will be able to start announcing the line up this week.

We’re going to try really hard not to drip feed the line up to you but, because this is all happening pretty quickly, it might come through in bits and pieces because we want to get you the info as soon as we have it.

In terms of the lineup, I know a lot of you have asked if we’ll be supporting local, Aussie bands and you can rest assured that we’ll absolutely be doing that. There’s way too much talent in Australia to overlook.

We’ll be getting the official kickstarter campaign up and running this week. It’s going to include information about pledging and more info about the event itself. We’ll keep adding info to the kickstarter and the website over the next few weeks, including the full event budget. We want to be really transparent with you guys and we wan’t you to know exactly where your money will be going. We thought it would be best to let you get through Christmas and everything first so we won’t be accepting pledges til the 2nd January. We know its really important to everyone that they feel confident that these shows will go ahead. That’s why we’re doing the kickstarter campaign: so you can become a founding member of LEGION and pledge your support to the festival without actually handing over any money until we’re all 100% sure that we can fund it and it can go ahead.

I know a lot of you guys are still trying to sort out ticket refunds for SW. Because we can’t put this event on without ticket sales, unfortunately we can’t do free tickets, but we’re going to figure something out to look after you. Still working it all out but will let you know more really soon.

About the dates….I know a lot of you were hoping that we’d keep it on the same dates as SW because you’ve already got flights, accom etc booked. While we’re reaching out to a lot of the bands on the SW lineup we’re basically creating a new festival from scratch and there’s a shit load of work to do. We’d love to have made it happen on the same dates for you guys but it’s just not possible to get it all together in time. We want to make sure we put on the best gig possible for you so we need to allow enough time to make sure it’s awesome. LEGION will happen in MARCH 2016.

At this stage we’re still nutting out the exact dates and locations but we’re still looking at all options and will be able to let you know more really soon.

We’ve had phenomenal support from the industry have had a number of companies come on board to help handle the event logistics. Only a few days into this thing we already have a team of industry leading professionals that can handle event production, site management, ticketing and more. Australia has really risen to the challenge and are 100% behind us and this band/fan driven concept.

For now I’m going to get back to it so I can get you more info over the next few days but please keep up the awesome positivity and support. The more you can share this around, the better chance we have of pulling this thing off.

Let’s do this!

Cheers,

JS"

[UPDATE]

Legion have announced that Oztix will be their official ticketing partner moving forward. In a statement, they write, "They’re already going above and beyond to look after all of us and make sure this thing happens in the right way.

"Having handled a bunch of massive rock festivals in the past, we feel really lucky to have these industry heavy weights throwing their support our way."