In Tune: How Riverbend is a bit like a coelacanth

June 2, 2016 at 1:00 a.m. | Updated June 7, 2016 at 3:03 p.m.

by Casey Phillips

Speculation and fascination are just two of the expressions on the visitors faces as they view a coelacanth on exhibition at the Natural History Museum in Paris on March 21, 1954. Coelacanths were believed to have been extinct for millions of years until one was caught off the east coast of Africa in the early 1950s.
Speculation and fascination are just two of the expressions on the visitors faces as they view a coelacanth on exhibition at the Natural History Museum in Paris on March 21, 1954. Coelacanths were believed to have been extinct for millions of years until one was caught off the east coast of Africa in the early 1950s.

I'm about to celebrate a bittersweet career milestone.

When I amble through the gates of this year's Riverbend festival, which runs June 10-18, it will mark the 10th time I've covered the event for the newspaper.

photo Casey Phillips

My first Riverbend arrived just two weeks after being hired in late May of 2007. At the time, I was fresh out of college and so laughably unfamiliar with Chattanooga that I needed help to locate the river. (No, I'm not kidding.)

That first festival was a trial by fire, to be sure, and a memorable experience, if not always an especially pleasant one.

I began my first year of Riverbend thrilled at the prospect of "covering a rock festival." Halfway through the event, however, I began nursing a sneaking suspicion that the preponderance of country bands and past-prime Top 40 acts wasn't a fluke.

If I've learned anything about Riverbend, it's that it has all the agility of a battleship attempting an about-face. A decade later, it's almost comforting to see how little has changed.

To paraphrase Robert Plant, "The song remains (mostly) the same."

Oh, there have been a few tweaks. Stages have meandered around and been renamed a time or two. We've replaced admittance pins with wristbands, and there are two headliners every night instead of one.

On the whole, however, Riverbend is like the horseshoe crab or the crocodile, a kind of timeless creature perpetually slipping under the evolutionary radar.

The schedule is still dominated by country and classic rock, and the best music is on the side stages, as always. Chicken-on-a-stick will always be available there, and organizers seem frustratingly disinclined to close the distance - figurative and literal - between the audience and performers on the acoustic atrocity that is the Coke Stage.

This year's schedule is practically an echo of 2007's selections. Heart and REO Speedwagon are this year's Steve Miller Band, and we've substituted Chris Young, Brett Eldredge and Thomas Rhett for Randy Owen, Craig Morgan and Blake Shelton.

Still, it's hard to criticize Riverbend's approach since, as I've said many times, it's a winning formula. If people are still paying to come through the gates, why should organizers bother to change the Coke Stage? I mean, if history taught us anything, it's that nobody liked New Coke.

I'm sure some of you have your own feelings about the festival, good and bad. My space here is limited, but my email capacity is practically infinite. Send me your suggestions for how to change Riverbend, and we can continue this discussion.

Contact Casey Phillips at cphillips@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6205. Follow him on Twitter at @PhillipsCTFP.

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