Last year, there weren’t many people in the Star Seating area for the concert by rapper Doug E. Fresh on the Coca Cola Stage.
Riverbend attendees have mixed emotions about a new policy set in place this year for watching acts on the Coca-Cola Stage.
Last year, for the first time in its 35-year history, Riverbend featured two acts each night on the stage. If festival-goers wanted to get the best seats to see both acts – the grass-and-concrete terrace in front of the stage and known as Star Seating – they paid one price above the cost of the week-long wristband or daily passes. Two acts for one price, just like a regular indoors concert.
“We were spending all this money bringing the Coke Stage up. It’s a pretty expensive project undertaking production-wise.” says Joe “Dixie” Fuller, the festival’s talent and production coordinator. “We felt like we were selling ourselves short by not utilizing it more.”
This year, the Coke Stage was tweaked again. Now there are separate Star Seating tickets for the opening act and the headliner; you pay $10 for the opening act and $30 for the headliner. And, if you only bought a seat for the opener, you must leave before the headliner takes the stage.
“We’re going to make two separate seatings, Fuller says. “We’re going to have a 6:30 [p.m.] seating and a 9:30 [p.m.] seating.”
And some folks aren’t too happy.
“I’d walk out,” said Charlie Helton, who was at the festival on Saturday.
“Just another way to gouge a few more nickels out of the festival-goers,” Gerald Van Hooser said in a comment on the Times Free Press Facebook page.
“Just bring all your money and burn it while they play,” Mark Salesy commented on Facebook.
Fuller shrugs off the negative comments.
“Usually when you add something [that] significant to a festival, it takes a year or two for it to all catch on,” he says. “You’re always going to have a little negative from some people. There’s a lot of naysayers that just dog the hell out of Riverbend.”
But the festival has taken steps, he says, to get the word out to everyone who has bought Star Seating for the opening act.
“We’ve let everybody know they have to leave,” he says. “We’ve tried our best though the media and informational organizations to let them know that, when you buy a 6:30 show ticket, you have to leave before the 9:30 show happens because there’s a whole new group of people coming in for that.
“We’ll probably tweak that after this year. I’d personally like to make that a constant ticket price, but that certainly doesn’t say we will,” he continues. “Those things are always up for discussion.”
And not everyone was ticked off. Some festival-goers say it makes sense to pay extra for better seating when it comes headliners because they get paid more to play.
“I haven’t been one to participate as far as buying those type of tickets,” said Ernie Plante, who was at Riverbend Saturday night with his wife, Joyce, “but I think it’s actually fair. I think that they should split it up so that they can see the one that they want to see and not necessarily spillover.”
“It’s like when you go to a movie and you skip over to the next (theater) by never going out,” Joyce said. “That’s not right.”
On Friday morning, a few hours before Riverbend began, Friends of the Festival Executive Director Chip Baker acknowledged that he had a bit of worry that some folks who paid to see the opening act would be less-than-willing to leave when the act was done.
“I do, I do,” he said. “But by and large, people are very nice.”
Double headliners on the Coke Stage is an attempt to bring different types of people to the festival, Fuller says. For instance, on Thursday, the opening act is rap/hip-hop trio Salt-n-Pepa while the headliner is jam band Umphrey’s McGee.
“It gives us a chance to be creative and try some different things and try different pairings [of artists],” he says.
Contact Hayden Seay at hseay@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6398.