When the Hopscotch Music Festival launched in 2010, Independent Weekly music editor Grayson Currin and marketing director Greg Lowenhagen brought a staggering 120 bands spread across 10 venues throughout Downtown Raleigh.
Those 10 venues centered around the festival’s epicenter, City Plaza.
But notably absent from Hopscotch’s lineup of venues was the newest addition to Downtown Raleigh, the Raleigh Amphitheater.
The amphitheater officially kicked off its inaugural season June 5, just three months before Hopscotch kicked off its inaugural festival.
“When we started Hopscotch, no one knew the amphitheater would be open by that point,” Currin explained. “We were told by the City that they had no idea when it would be open — it might be open, but there was no guarantee.”
As a result of the flippancy of the Raleigh Amphitheater’s opening schedule, Currin and Lowenhagen opted to exclude it from the official Hopscotch venue list. Although it was ultimately home to a Hopscotch-sponsored post-party featuring Dosh and the North Carolina Symphony on Sept. 12.
But as both the amphitheater and Hopscotch enter their second years, again the venue is excluded from the festival’s sanctioned activities. This despite the fact the organizers’ decided to expand Hopscotch to include two more venues.
Lowenhagen says this is predominately due to Raleigh Amphitheater’s partner agreements.
“The amphitheater has its own rules and regulations with who they’ve partnered with in order to get it built and also to book it,” Lowenhagen said.
He added, “So they have their own partners in place and we can’t get a deal done where we can share the revenue on the concessions. That means that all of the beer sales and all of the food sales and everything else that is sold in the venue would go to an entity that isn’t us.”
The amphitheater’s booking is handled mainly by Live Nation, with Deep South Entertainment contributing a few bands to flesh out the venue’s schedule. Hopscotch, however, is curated by Currin, and booked by he and Lowenhagen.
“We pay for the bands, then we pay to rent the space and pay for the production,” Lowenhagen explained of booking at the amphitheater. “But we would not really reap part of a major financial stream there, which are the concession.”
While there were contractual problems with hosting Hopscotch events at the amphitheater, Currin says there’s also a charm to centering the festival around City Plaza that couldn’t be duplicated if the amphitheater was the fest’s central venue.
In 2010, City Plaza was home to show stealing performances from The Love Language, No Age, The Rosebuds, Panda Bear, Broken Social Scene and Public Enemy.
“As you walked through the City from venue to venue, or you walked to Raleigh Times to get dinner, you could hear this large band playing a few blocks down and it felt like a city united,” Currin said.
“That’s definitely a charm in keeping it in City Plaza rather than pushing it over just a little bit into the amphitheater, which is a space that is designed — at least to an extent — to keep sound in.”
Located on Fayetteville Street in Downtown Raleigh, Currin says the setting of City Plaza also serves as selling point for attracting bands to Hopscotch.
“We pitch it to bands that Fayetteville Street has forever been called North Carolina’s Main Street,” Currin explained. “And as you play, you’ll be staring at the State Capitol and at your back there will be this beautiful arts center.”
Lowenhagen added, “We loved using the Plaza, it worked out perfectly. And it’s something — even if we had a really legitimate option to use the amphitheater — we’d still put the shows on in City Plaza.”
Tickets for Hopscotch go on sale April 20, at 10 a.m. for between $32 and $155. For a complete festival lineup, click here.
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