Take a deep breath, folks, because things are about to get real crazy for a little while. Riverbend starts tomorrow – in case you hadn’t noticed that many downtown streets are closed and there’s a hellaciously big barge with a stage on top of it sitting on the river.
The tweaks to the festival this year are few and far between, but the one significant alteration is a game-changer: the addition of a second Coke Stage headliner every night at 6:30 p.m.
Since I began covering Riverbend almost a decade ago – a sentence that makes my brain curdle slightly – I’ve found it odd that Friends of the Festival only used the Coke Stage once per night. The floating venue is not only incredibly picturesque, it is as much a symbol of the festival as the Tennessee Aquarium is of downtown Chattanooga.
That being said, the fact that it has been used for almost 30 years to host a single act a night seemed like a missed opportunity, not to mention a waste of resources. This has always been especially baffling since failing to make use of equipment is why Friends of the Festival introduced Faith and Family Night 15 years ago.
So the biggest question mark this year is how doubling down will go over. Chattanoogans are notoriously hard to retrain, once they’ve adopted a habit. Don’t believe me? Just ask any venue manager in town about the utter futility of trying to convince locals to pay for a show in advance. (Bring a comfortable chair with you because the rant may take a while to blow over.)
There are many festivalgoers who have been trained for decades to think of the Coke Stage as a one-off venue. They’ll scurry out when gates open and brave the heat just long enough to claim a spot on the lawn before retreating to the air-conditioned comforts of home until darkness falls. It remains to be seen whether the addition of a second act will be enough to convince them to come out when the sun is up and the accompanying swelter is still in full force.
To its credit, Friends of the Festival has done its part to chum the waters. St. Paul & The Broken Bones, Leon Russell, War and Here Come the Mummies are all can’t-miss acts, in my book.
It’ll be interesting to see if Chattanoogans will take the bait. I’d hate to see such talent wasted on an empty field. That would be embarrassing, to say the least.
What are your Riverbend plans? Are you excited? Underwhelmed? Who do you want to see? Who couldn’t you care less about? Email me, and we’ll compare notes.
Contact Casey Phillips at cphillips@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6205. Follow him on Twitter at @Phillips CTFP.