News

Summer concert series moving to Main Street

By Bill Moss, Published: March 3, 2016

Rhythm & Brews, the popular concert and craft beer event, has outgrown the downtown venue it’s used for three years and is moving to South Main Street, where it will take up two blocks.

“The change in location is really related to the growing size of the event and we felt like we needed to take advantage of the opportunity to do that now,” said Downtown Coordinator Lew Holloway.
Organizers have made adjustment several times over three years to maximize the space at the Azalea parking lot on King Street, flipping the stage from the southern to the northern end and moving food vendors and portable johns onto Third and Fourth avenues. Even those measures were inadequate as crowds swelled.
“The conversation really started last year at the Mountain Heart concert,” Holloway said. “We kind of maxed out on our space. That was really the first time we said we really need to start considering where we could grow.”
By moving to South Main, the concert will take less parking.
“We might not have five of them that are the equal of Mountain Heart but we’ve got a couple (bands) that will,” he said. This year’s lineup will be announced later this month.
The stage will be on the south end, so concertgoers will be looking down a slight grade. Sound equipment will fit behind it, close to Caswell Street. On concert days, the city plans to close the Caswell-to-Barnwell block about 11 a.m. for the stage setup. It plans to keep the next block up — Barnwell-to-Allen — open until about 3 p.m. The total space will increase from about 1 acre to one and a third, creating room for the beer trucks, food vendors and other booths.
“We’re talking to Wells Fargo about using some of their parking lot as a seating area,” Holloway said. “Everything will be all in one area. At the Mountain Heart concert the beer lines got really long. One of the things with the new location is we might be able to pour off both sides of the truck and split that line in half and have more volunteers” working the taps.
“Some of these will probably be game day decisions,” he added. “We know we’re going to have some ‘aha’ moments once we get going. We looked at a lot of different locations before we landed there. We feel pretty good about it.”
The dates of this year’s concerts are May 19, June 16, July 21, Aug. 18 and Sept. 15.