It’s June and getting warmer and stickier. That can only mean one thing: It’s the time of year when music fans mob Tennessee.
The Riverbend festival is expected to attract hundreds of thousands of fans to Chattanooga’s waterfront June 7-15. Bonnaroo will lure 80,000 campers to a 700-acre former farm in Manchester, Tenn., June 13-16, along with a throng of international music journalists.
Bonnaroo is higher profile – it pulls in bigger acts – this year even former Beatle Paul McCartney – and reporters from the likes of Rolling Stone and Billboard cover it, but Riverbend is attended by more of our readers. And, to be fair, this year’s Riverbend has arguably the most current lineup ever in terms of headliners having new albums now out, hit singles and musical relevance.
We’ll cover both festivals, of course. But our coverage of Riverbend, the hometown festival, will be more intense. This year’s big acts include Southern favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd, singer/songwriter Cee Lo Green and country star Dierks Bentley.
Every day in the Times Free Press, we’ll have information on the acts coming up that night, and coverage of the previous night’s music. We’ll also have a Critic’s Choice in which reporters Casey Phillips and Barry Courter recommend acts that aren’t the headliner and tell you why they’re worth seeing.