There's been no lack of local music festivals in recent years, including SPARKcon, Raleigh Wide Open and Durham's Troika Music Festival. But the Independent Weekly's Hopscotch will be the most ambitious local festival anyone has attempted.
Hopscotch will happen over the weekend of Sept. 9-11 in downtown Raleigh, with about 120 local, regional and national acts playing in 10 venues ranging from 6,500-capacity City Plaza to small-capacity clubs such as Slim's and The Berkeley Cafe.
"Troika is amazing and SPARKcon is incredible," says Hopscotch director Greg Lowenhagen, an advertising account executive for the Independent. "There's room for all of them, and we'll see if there's room for Hopscotch, too. I hope it finds a home as something that excites people about the music scene here."
About half of the Hopscotch acts will be local, including such leading lights as Megafaun, Rosebuds, I Was Totally Destroying It and Spider Bags. Out-of-town ringers include Chicago instrumental-rock band Tortoise, Brooklyn ambient-folk singer/songwriter Sharon Van Etten and Baltimore's Future Islands.
But the high-profile aspect of the festival will be the out-of-town headliners playing at City Plaza (which will be the first-ever paid ticketed shows there). The Canadian alternative-rock collective Broken Social Scene will headline Sept. 10, followed by the venerable Public Enemy on Sept. 11.
"For us to break even, those will need to do well," Lowen hagen says. "That's the big risk-reward component, what drives the whole thing. We're paying those bands the most, so we hope they'll sell the most."
Organizers hope to draw about 3,000 fans for Broken Social Scene and 5,000 for Public Enemy, two figures that Lowenhagen says would "exceed our expectations" and get the festival past the break-even point.
A Web site is set to go live today at hopscotchmusicfest .com with complete schedule and ticket details. Prices for multinight passes will range from $45 to $120, with single tickets for the City Plaza shows set at $30.
Lowenhagen, music curator Grayson Currin and show booker Paul Siler have been working on Hopscotch since June. But a complicating factor could be impossible to plan for: the weather. September is prime hurricane season.
"It's just a cross-your-fingers deal, because there's no way to know," Lowenhagen says. "That's hurricane season, but last year that same weekend was one of the prettiest of the year. If I had my druthers, we'd be doing this in the spring. But we just couldn't get it done in time."
