Innings Festival Tempe 2026: OK Go’s Damian Kulash Talks Authentic Human Connection (And Nerdy Fandoms)

Innings Festival 2026 took place February 20th-22nd at Tempe Beach Park. The annual festival coincides with the start of Major League Baseball’s Cactus League, celebrating baseball and music with incredible musical lineups, MLB legend interactions, interactive themed games, food vendors, and merchandise. This is the one event I never miss. It’s an amazing fusion of two of my personal favorite nerdy fandoms.

This year’s musical lineup included Sublime, Mumford & Sons, Public Enemy, Goo Goo Dolls, Marcy Playground, Cage the Elephant, Bowling for Soup, Blink-182, Twenty One Pilots, Eve 6, and alternative/power/indie/pop/rock innovators OK Go.  

Ahead of their 3:20 set on the Right Field Stage on Friday, I was able to catch up with OK Go front man Damian Kulash for an exclusive Comicon interview. It was exactly as much fun as you would expect.

In one of the interviews that took place ahead of mine, I had already overheard Kulash talking about how much of a baseball nerd lead guitarist/keyboardist Andy Ross is, so one of the first things I wanted to know is what nerdy fandom Kulash claimed as his own. 

“My nerdy fandom is nerds! I realize that sounds a little too self reflexive, but what gets me excited is when someone is really into their niche. Not because it’s cool, not because it’s got promise, but because it’s just good for their soul. 

“When you find the mathematician who’s just trying to find the new corner of math that no one else has seen, you know? Or the ceramicist who just needs the feeling of the clay,” he said. “It’s finding those people who can milk joy out of life for real, instead of sort of selling the idea of milking joy out of life. It’s so satisfying for me. So with our videos and our music, I’m trying to find the corners where I can play with those people. 

“And that can be just a person who likes to play their guitar a certain way. That’s the most obvious one in music. It’s that feeling of learning, that feeling of discovery, like I had no idea when I opened this door there’d be such a big universe on the other side of it. For me, that’s the reason to be alive. That may be too broad to really answer your question, but every nerd I’ve ever met shares that one thing. I’m a fan of human curiosity,” he continued.

The band has a massive online following for their viral, one-shot, choreography-heavy music videos. If you find yourself on Ok Go’s YouTube channel, strap in. Between the official music videos and visualizers, fan Q&A sessions, and videos of the band goofing off with choreography in someone’s back yard, you aren’t going anywhere for an hour or three. These are four guys who love having fun with each other and sharing those moments with fans.

I asked Kulash how they bring that same energy and sense of wonder and joy to the stage.

“We just play the songs the best we can, man,” he said.

“The reason we make those videos in the first place is always an attempt to get back to this (gesturing toward the stage).  This may sound like a stretch, but I promise you it’s true. When you’re on stage singing, people in the audience’s heartbeats literally start lining up with yours. You can’t help it. It’s a physical reality of humanness. We synchronize this way, and music has this magical relationship with that. There’s nothing like a live performance in terms of that community and shared experience. 

“When the digital era took over for the way we distribute music, we weren’t conscious of this at the time, but we were in a position of wondering ‘How do you still connect with people?’ Obviously, you can make a recording that people will listen to on their headphones, and it will have some of that effect, but not all of it,” he added.

“When it turned to being a little thing on a little screen, something was really different. We could record ourselves playing a song in our practice space or whatever, but it just wouldn’t connect the same way. Putting a camera up and doing a ridiculous little dance somehow did. It didn’t connect with people because their heartbeats aligned, but it did open up this sense of joy and connection through that little screen in a way that we couldn’t find just distributing our music through those channels. Watching someone play acoustic guitar on a little screen just doesn’t do the same thing.

“We didn’t know that at the time, but all of that was an attempt to reach through the screen to the humans on the other side. It’s that impulse to want to really touch people, to be in a place where you can feel that. That’s why you end up being a musician in the first place. The film making version of that is just something we stumbled into along the way. It already existed in live performances.”

The band’s set led off with a song so badass, OK Go made two wildly different music videos for it. They are both epic. Off the band’s 2010 album Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, “This Too Shall Pass”  set the mood for the rest of the show. 

Second up was “Get Over It”, off their eponymous 2002 album. In the three hole was “I Won’t Let You Down” from Hungry Ghosts (2014). In clean up, “Take Me With You” from And the Adjacent Possible (2025). Fifth (there’s no cool nickname for this slot in the batting order) was “A Good, Good Day At Last“. Then “White Knuckles”, “This Is How It Ends”/”Where Is My Mind” (Pixies cover), “Obsession”, “Do What You Want”, “Oh Lately It’s So Quiet”, “Love”, and “Upside Down & Inside Out”.

That connection between musicians and audience that Kulash kept going on about was present in full force. The crowd was hot, the music was tight, and there was palpable chemistry between artist and audience. This group of goofy dads is obviously having the time of their lives up there, and the feeling is infectious. According to Kulash, that’s the entire point — finding joy and spreading it however you can.