Riverbend Festival organizers will announce this year's schedule Thursday at noon during a media event at Songbirds, and organizers said while there is still plenty of variety, fans should notice a more intentional lineup each night.

Reading the social media posts following Monday's announcement by Friends of the Festival that the barge will no longer be a part of the event was as interesting as I thought it would be.

Kudos, Riverbend.

Will there be a Riverbend 2020 and, if so, where will it be held and what will it look like?

Was Riverbend 2019 a success?

Is smaller better?

Laura Walker McNutt was less than a year into her career as a photojournalist for the Chattanooga News-Free Press when she went to Riverbend on Aug.19, 1985. The diminutive Walker was not on duty but carried some of her equipment as she accompanied her father and younger sister to see the Pointer Sisters.

The Riverbend Festival ended its four-night run on June 1, 2019. The revamped festival featured such big-names as Weezer, Lionel Richie, Keith Urban, and Macklemore.

Chattanooga police are investigating after two people were injured in a shooting Saturday night outside the Tennessee Aquarium downtown.

The Riverbend Festival continued Thursday, May 30, with several local bands, Black Stone Cherry and headliner Lionel Richie.

Riverbend started Wednesday. Tokens are gone. Pins are gone. Week-plus downtown crowds are, you guessed it, gone too.

Riverbend 2019's opening night had the usual amount of glitches, including technical hiccups with the RFID chip readers on wristbands at the main gate and bands playing shorter sets than advertised, but for the most part things seemed to go off about like past festivals.

Macklemore headlines Riverbend on Saturday, June 1, with a performance on the Coca-Cola Stage at 9:30 p.m.

The setup work has been done, and now it's time to party.

Find your jam.

You can expect several things at a War & Treaty show like the one set for Saturday, June 1, on the Bud Light Stage at Riverbend.

Riverbend started yesterday. Unfortunately, this column had to be written and ready to be put on the page on Tuesday, so you won't find any first-day insights here. Like a lot of other people, I've been looking forward to seeing the changes as well as seeing several of the bands in the lineup.

Keith Urban has no hesitation in saying his current release, "Graffiti U," is not a country album. Fact is, says Urban, it's not any particular type of album.

Fresh from the judges' panel at "American Idol," Lionel Richie will headline Thursday's Riverbend at 9:30 p.m. on the Coca-Cola Stage.

When Mitch Rossell played Riverbend last summer, he was still basking in the glow of having written "Ask Me How I Know," which Garth Brooks recorded.

LISA DENTON: Happy Memorial Day, Barry. I don't know about you, but I plan to spend the day cleaning out the kitchen junk drawer looking for stray Riverbend tokens. I don't remember the exact year I had the kitchen remodeled, but I think it's safe to say there could be 25 years' worth of stuff stuffed in that drawer.

Faced with a changing landscape both in its downtown Chattanooga riverfront location and the music festival scene, the Friends of the Festival board of directors had a choice when it came to the future of the Riverbend Festival it produces every summer: Keep talking about making changes, or rip the Band-Aid off and get it done.

Rock band Weezer will headline the first night of the newly revamped and reconfigured Riverbend Festival on Wednesday at the 21st Century Waterfront.