Three years after “stepping back” from music amid allegations of habitual sexual misconduct toward underage fans, once-popular dubstep artist Bassnectar is beginning to ramp up his career once again—and many people aren’t happy about it. On Wednesday, hours after announcing a Bassnectar-led event set for the end of October, Asheville’s Harrah’s Cherokee Center canceled the planned performances amid backlash from its patrons.
After breaking his years-long silence in January to announce the premiere of a live video filmed in 2018, Bassnectar kickstarted his comeback push in earnest this summer with the release of a new album, The Golden Rule, exclusively on his subscriber-only content platform, The Other Side. The album was later released on conventional streaming platforms on Friday, August 25th. Throughout the album rollout, commenting has been disabled on all of Bassnectar’s public posts.
A week before the widespread release of The Golden Rule, Bassnectar announced his first publicized performances since the 2020 allegations came to light, a two-day event at Las Vegas, NV’s Daylight Beach Club at Mandalay Bay dubbed Wildstyle and billed as “a bassnectar family reunion.” Tickets for the event, due to take place on October 6th and 7th and feature performances by Bassnectar, Dead Prez, R.A.W., Maidenspace, Rhaksha, Rye Rye, DJ Suga, DJ Crazy, Rye Baanji, Jeff Bomb, LocoQueen, and Xzaakt, quickly sold out.
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In the time since the two-day Wildstyle event was announced, Daylight Beach Club appears to have removed the event’s admat from the calendar pages on its website. While the calendar pages for October 6th and 7th still display the name “Wildstyle,” the associated image is a stock design used elsewhere on the site for nondescript club nights, as opposed to the custom artwork and performer names included with other events featuring notable performers. No performers are mentioned for either date. Daylight Beach Club also currently has no posts on its social media pages about the Wildstyle event.
When Live For Live Music reached out to Daylight Beach Club for comment on whether or not the Wildstyle weekend was taking place as initially planned, a representative for the venue responded simply, “Event sold out.”
On Wednesday, Bassnectar added to his performance schedule with the announcement of another multi-artist, two-day event called FreakStyle at Asheville, NC’s Harrah’s Cherokee Center on October 27th and 28th, billed with the tagline “celebrating life together at another bassnectar family reunion.” For the first time since Bassnectar resumed his public activities, the announcement posts on the venue’s social media pages were open to comments, and those opposed to the booking were quick to make their feelings heard.
[Screengrab via Harrah’s Cherokee Arena – Asheville, 8/30/23]
By the end of the day, the venue had canceled the FreakStyle event amid public backlash. Per a post by Harrah’s Cherokee Center Asheville on Wednesday night, “The Bassnectar: FreakStyle event scheduled for October 27-28, 2023, has been canceled. As a publicly-owned entertainment venue, we cannot deny access to the venue’s rental spaces to event performers, groups, or conventions based solely on the content of the event and/or performer. We value the support of our community members and fans, and we will work diligently with our publicly-appointed venue commission to review our booking policies and procedures.” Comments were restricted on the aforementioned cancellation post as of publication time.
[UPDATE 8/31/23, 7:00 p.m. ET]: In a response to the cancellation of the Asheville concerts posted to his Instagram page entitled “Truth, Lies & Cancel Culture,” shared alongside an image featuring the words “We Don’t Cancel Culture We Create It,” Bassnectar railed against “The Cancel Culture mob,” comparing the phenomenon to “a modern form of domestic terrorism.” He confirmed that the Las Vegas concerts would go on as planned and said that the Asheville shows were “postponed” as a result of “a campaign of hostility, intimidation, and preposterous lies.”
Bassnectar, real name Lorin Ashton, first came under in the summer of 2020 in large part via an Instagram account called @evidenceagainstbassnectar. The account, which made its first post on Sunday, June 28th, 2020, quickly shared scores of posts featuring evidence of Bassnectar’s alleged sexual misconduct toward young female fans, some of which were dated as far back as 2015.
Days later, in a since-deleted social media post on the Bassnectar social media channels, Aston noted, “I am stepping back from my career and I am stepping down from my position of power and privilege in this community because I want to take responsibility and accountability. I feel intense compassion for anyone I may have hurt. I truly hope you allow me a chance to work together toward healing. The rumors you are hearing are untrue, but I realize some of my past actions have caused pain, and I am deeply sorry. I am handing off our nonprofit Be Interactive to a diverse team to continue without my involvement moving forward. Sometime in the future I may share more thoughts on these matters, but for now, please take care of each other and I wish you all the brightest future.”
In a previous post, Ashton had acknowledged the allegations with a long message in which he concluded that he would spend his summer “examining my privilege and opening my communication to people from my past with whom I had an intimate relationship. What I am most open to is healing. I want to encourage anyone anywhere who feels alone or helpless: we want to be a bridge to support and therapy.”
As the lawsuit against him remains in its discovery phase with no trial date set three years later, his stance seems to have evolved. “Our client is under no obligation to put his life and career on hold because of false allegations,” said Stacey Ashby, attorney for Bassnectar, in response to a request for comment on the planned Wildstyle event by Las Vegas NBC affiliate News 3. “This civil litigation has already been going on for two years and could continue well into 2024. It was filed by three disgruntled former romantic partners of Bassnectar and is meritless.” Per News 3, Mr. Ashby added that they would take action “against anyone who slanders Bassnectar or ‘interferes with the Bassnectar community’s right to thrive.’”
This story is developing.
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