Sometimes, doubling down is worth the gamble.
According to Riverbend Festival officials, the decision this year to devote about $300,000 to tacking on a second Coke Stage headliner each night is resulting in larger crowds and happier vendors.
"We won't know the full impact of the return until it all settles out in a month or so and all the bills are paid, but I'm seeing bigger numbers at an earlier time in the day," said Friends of the Festival talent and production coordinator Joe "Dixie" Fuller. "It's panning out beautifully."
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Doubling the headliner bill this year was motivated largely by a desire to better capitalize on Riverbend's significant financial investment in the Coke Stage, which sits on a barge in the Tennessee River. Despite being the festival's most expensive venue, it historically has featured only a single act each night.
Adding an early show on the barge also was intended to bring in artists who otherwise end up trapped in "Riverbend limbo," an internal term organizers use to describe bands that are too expensive to feature on a secondary stage but lack the drawing power of a 9:30 p.m. headliner.
"There was always a whole slew of acts in between who we couldn't fit anywhere," said Friends of the Festival talent assistant Bob Payne, who approached Fuller last year with the idea of doubling the Coke Stage schedule. "It gave us a chance to book a lot of bands that are really good and would have been Coke a few years ago or will be Coke in a year or two, but we couldn't afford them on [the Bud Light Stage]."
The average price for artists who have been booked for the early Coke Stage slot this year has been between $25,000 and $50,000, Fuller said.
Beyond widening the field of potential bookings, however, organizers say one of the biggest benefits to adding an earlier Coke performance has been attracting crowds that arrive earlier and spend more.
"The vendors are happy," says Karen Shostak, the festival's director of sales. "The 6:30 show has been wonderful. People are here at 5 p.m., and they're immediately entertained."
Justin Doege, manager of Harvell's Concessions' Pronto Pups stand on Chestnut Street near the intersection with Riverfront Parkway, says the earlier headliner shows are resulting in more sales.
"It's bringing in more people, bringing in the crowds earlier and more people at night," he said. "It's giving us the opportunity to make money earlier instead of just in a two-hour period."
Doege said sales are "definitely higher" this year.
"These sales are like we're used to from back in the day," he said. "Riverbend is coming back alive."
Friends of the Festival Executive Director Chip Baker said he's pleased by turnout this year, estimating - anecdotally - that the early headliners and mostly rain-free evenings have contributed to the bolstered early evening attendance. Despite the implementation of a digital wristband scanning system last year, however, Baker could not provide definitive attendance figures.
"I think we quit doing them [hard numbers] about three years ago because we have so many ways that people get into the festival," he said. "I'm not going to put something out there and hang my hat on it.
"There's some more stuff we need to work on [with wristband scanning], but it's working better than last year, by all means. We'll still continue to try and perfect that system."
This year's crop of early headliners has included diverse Oklahoma songwriter Leon Russell, classic R&B band War, Birmingham neo-soul outfit St. Paul & the Broken Bones and hip-hop legends Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick. Tonight's co-headliner is Georgian country up-and-comer Cole Swindell.
"My wife and I like [the early headliners] a lot," retired Chattanoogan Joe Esch said in a post to the Times Free Press Facebook page. "[It's a] big upgrade in music value for the people that come early. I hope that it continues next year."
While this is the first year that Riverbend consistently has featured two daily Coke Stage headliners, there have been isolated instances when musicians on tour together were routed in such a way that they both made Coke Stage appearances on a single night.
In 2006, six years before he headlined the festival, Grammy Award-nominated country superstar Eric Church played an opening set for Hank Williams Jr. The next year, Tennessee country artist Craig Morgan warmed up the barge for Blake Shelton. In 2013, the festival featured two nights with Coke Stage pairings, including Drake White and Lynyrd Skynyrd and Hot Chelle Rae and Gavin DeGraw.
The difference this year, Fuller said, is that Coke Stage artists are sharing the bill as co-headliners rather than opener/closer pairings.
"They're both featured artists," he said. "It makes good sense to me to do it that way because they're all headliners."
But the bolstered schedule has not been without stumbles.
Premium "Star Seats" are sold each evening for $22 to $30 each, which reserves a prime viewing location in the concrete amphitheater fronting the barge. Purchasing a seat reserves the spot for the entire evening, but the area has been visibly bare during the earlier headliner's performance, organizers say.
"The 9:30 p.m. acts are the bigger acts, so people were probably buying the Star Seats for that particular act, and they may not even be going to the 6:30 act, so we have some empty Star Seats," Payne said. "But if you sold it at a reduced price for the first act and another [higher price] for the second act, you would have had people sitting there [earlier]. They just didn't want to have to clear the area."
At the festival grounds, some attendees also have complained that the weather is too warm during the early show and that the distance between the crowd and the performer is too great. Some also have pointed out that the obstacle course of blankets and seats placed early on by Riverbend Sooners makes it especially difficult to close that gap.
On the whole, however, the doubled schedule has had a positive reception, and Fuller said there's every chance it could become the norm in years to come.
"I'm tickled to death, and I think it was a grand idea," he said. "If we feel like it works this [year], we'll certainly keep it in place."
Contact Casey Phillips at cphillips@timesfree press.com or 423-757-6205. Follow him on Twitter at @PhillipsCTFP.