Riverbend 2015 online
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Melissa Etheridge was perplexed.
“This is the weirdest stage I’ve ever been on,” she said while headlining Riverbend on June 10.
Paul Janeway of St. Paul & the Broken Bones said it was a brand-new experience.
“We’ve never performed on a barge before,” he told the crowd after a few songs during the group’s June 5 set. “And that’s all I’ll say about that.”
And Little River Band’s Greg Hind was having trouble hearing. “You gotta get louder,” he said to the crowd when the band performed on June 11. “We’re way up here. We can’t hear you.”
The recent move by Friends of the Festival to add a 6:30 p.m. act on the main Coca-Cola Stage at Riverbend in addition to the traditional 9:30 p.m. headliners appears to have solved one Riverbend challenge, but it brought renewed criticism to another.
Almost since the first festival in 1982, many festival attendees – especially the more serious music fans, the ones that want to literally feel the sweat coming off their favorite acts – have complained that the Coke Stage is simply not a good venue for watching a live act. More than a few Coke Stage artists, as well as fans, have mentioned the distance between the act and fans during the shows, and not just this year.
In 2012, John Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls said, “I wish we were closer to you, but we’ll try to give you a good show anyway.”
Etheridge made several references to the stage during her set: “Guess there will be no stage diving tonight” and “I’d throw a pick out for you but it’s just like oooohhh, nobody would catch it.”
And during his June 12 show, Gregg Allman asked, “Can you hear all right? I hope so.”
Some fans aren’t thrilled with the stage, either.
“For myself it becomes more difficult every year to enjoy the Coke Stage,” Stephen Fogus of Douglasville, Ga., wrote on the Times Free Press’ Facebook page. “The performers are not the problem, in fact, there seems to be a couple acts whose shows are pleasant surprises every year. This year it has come to my attention that there aren’t any good seats or locations for watching a band at the Coke Stage.”
Dennis Rhea of Rossville said, “I absolutely hate the idea of a second act on the Coke Stage. It is the worst stage to see an act.”
Adding the earlier act for the first time in the festival’s 34-year history gave organizers the chance to book acts that are considered too big for the second largest stage, the Bud Light, but too small to deserve the 9:30 p.m. headlining slot on the Coke Stage, a situation Executive Director Chip Baker called “Riverbend limbo.”
By many accounts, adding the 6:30 p.m. show was a positive move. More people showed up earlier – and spent more money with food and drink vendors – to see bands like St. Paul & the Broken Bones, an act that fits the “Riverbend limbo” descriptor. With a recent appearance on “Late Show with David Letterman” and as the opening act for recent Rolling Stones’ stadium concerts, they are new, hip and hot.
But they don’t have a hit record on the charts or the radio and are likely unknown to many of the Riverbend fans who traditionally sit in lawn chairs all evening to hear the more familiar and radio-friendly Coke Stage headliner. The Birmingham-based St. Paul, however, are known to the “music snobs” of the world and, as hoped by Riverbend officials, their show brought out fans who wanted to hear Janeway’s over-the-top impassioned soul singing and watch his quirky dance moves, highlighted by his gold shoes.
On the Coke Stage, most of that up-close-and-personal element was lost on fans, even for those in the paid “Star Seating” area in the Riverfront amphitheater section and those sitting on the lawn in front of the stage, who craned their necks backward to see. And Janeway noticed.
“Sure is a lot of green between you and us,” he said at one point.
“[I] liked the idea of the double acts on Coke Stage but sympathized with my favorite, St. Paul & the Broken Bones,” wrote Judy K. Taylor of Chattanooga on the Times Free Press Facebook page. “He (Janeway) so wanted to be close to the people.
“I’ve heard other headliners express similar desires,” she continued.
Bands like St. Paul say they feed off the close interaction with fans. Not only does the barge that serves as the Coke Stage place the artist almost 40 feet above the water, it also puts them anywhere from 90 to 120 feet away from fans, so they don’t get the same crowd reaction as when fans are right up against the stage, which is the case at the Bud Light and Unum stages.
In comparison, the main stages at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival – the What and Which stages, which attract crowds as big as 80,000 – only have about 6 to 8 feet of open space between the security barrier and the stage itself.
Baker said the festival has spent a good deal of money on high-tech quality video walls that are placed to the side of the Coke Stage to bring the show to the people. But the center screen on the front of the Coke Stage was not used for the 6:30 acts because it is a projection screen and doesn’t function in daylight, according to Baker.
The screens didn’t appease the feelings of the serious music fans who came to see St. Paul and other earlier acts such Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick, Hunter Hayes, Little River Band and Leon Russell. The serious fan would tell you that they didn’t come to Riverbend to essentially watch a concert on TV.
Baker is used to hearing such comments, but said the acts almost always love the overall experience when all is said and done.
“Almost all of them make comments because it’s not a typical setting,” he said. “Their first impression is always, ‘Wow, this is different’ and their last impression is ‘Wow, we had a blast.”
Baker readily admits the stage has its quirks, but sees them more as positives than negatives. He said that not only is the stage itself different, but the whole experience is unique for Coke Stage acts, who are brought to the stage by boat and relax prior to the show on a yacht.
“There is none like it,” he said.
Acts “are not used to the dynamics of the stage when they first walk out there, but then they love it because it’s so different. They love getting there by boat and the fact that the Green Room is on a luxury yacht.
“It’s such a cool setting. It’s downtown and on the river. It is what it is and it works well.”
Fans, however, don’t get that special treatment and only know they are farther away than they’d like. Even those that pay extra for Star Seating, which can cost around $20 per seat, are still a long way from the acts. Those who choose to sit on the green on the other side of Riverfront Parkway are farther away still.
Where the real disconnect is involves those fans that like to stand, or dance, as close to the band as possible. These are the ones who will stand in front of a stage for as many as eight hours to ensure their spot right up close, a situation that happens frequently at Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tenn.
Obviously, not everyone at every concert gets front-row seats, but at Riverbend there is no true front row for the Coke Stage unless you are actually seated on the barge.
When contacting acts that have never played here before, selling them on Chattanooga is more difficult than selling them on the festival or the stage, Baker said. His staff is very forthcoming about the stage and what to expect, he said, going so far as to send pictures.
“If they are surprised it’s because their manager hasn’t talked to them. But the first thing we have to do is convince them that Chattanooga is a cool place with a large festival.”
And Baker doesn’t see any way – or even a need – to improve the Coke Stage situation.
“It’s been this way for 34 years,” he said. “It’s like taking Bonnaroo and moving it to name a location. This is what Riverbend is.”
Douglasville’s Fogus has some ideas on how to fix the situation, but they’re not cheap.
“My solution would be to lower the stage at least 50 percent and change the concrete bleachers and the lawn in back all the way to Riverside Drive into a sloping, outdoor, turfed amphitheater,” he said. “To defer cost, I would not object to paying 20 more dollars for entry.”
And Rossville’s Rhea, despite his supreme dislike of the Coke Stage, said he won’t stop coming to Riverbend because of it.
“I will still find plenty of acts to make it worth my time and money,” he said. “I consider Riverbend one of the best things of the year, and about living in Chattanooga. I have never and will never complain about the cost, since Riverbend is still a great value.”
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfree press.com or 423-757-6354.