New York, NY (Top40 Charts/ Romo PR) - The Independent Weekly proudly announces the Hopscotch
Music Festival, the Triangle's biggest music festival yet and a strong addition to the country's festival circuit. Scheduled for Sept. 9-11, 2010, in downtown Raleigh, with 120 bands in 10 venues over three days, Hopscotch offers fans high-quality local, national and international options in just about every genre you can imagine-rock, hip-hop, alt-country, heavy metal, dance, punk, classical, noise, drone, folk and more. Tickets go on sale Thursday, April 1, at www.etix.com and www.hopscotchmusicfest.com.
The festival will be headlined by two nights in Raleigh City Plaza, downtown's crown jewel, which opened last fall. Indie rock giants PANDA BEAR and BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE will headline Friday, Sept. 10, with support from Triangle favorites THE ROSEBUDS. Hip-hop's most legendary group, PUBLIC ENEMY, will headline with a rare full-band set on Saturday, Sept. 11. Los Angeles trio NO AGE and Raleigh's THE LOVE LANGUAGE will open. More than 110 bands will be spread between nine clubs throughout the festival's three days. A sample of those bands includes: Washed Out, Tortoise, Lucero, 9th Wonder, Akron/Family, Marissa Nadler, Harvey Milk, Fucked Up, Javelin, Richard Buckner, Megafaun, Kylesa, Atlas Sound, Harlem and Bear in Heaven.
Carefully assembled by Hopscotch Director Greg Lowenhagen and Curator and Independent Weekly Music Editor Grayson Currin, the lineup spotlights the core of the Triangle's rich music scene by putting it on the same stages as some of the world's best bands.
'Several music festivals in the Triangle make it clear how strong the talent in North Carolina is, and they do it better and better each year,' Currin says. 'We don't want to replace that. Rather, we want to expand on it by showing that this area has the caliber of bands and listeners that can support a big music festival.'
Lowenhagen hatched the idea for Hopscotch after moving to Raleigh following stints in Austin and Chicago, cities known for their support of live music festivals. He was surprised that no events in the Triangle regularly brought in a fleet of bands from outside of town.
'When I returned from being away, I realized the Triangle, with its strong music heritage and abundance of local talent, seemed ready for a different, more nationally recognizable festival to call its own,' he says.
After being hired as an account executive at the Independent Weekly, he approached owner Steve Schewel and publisher Sioux Watson with his idea to start such a festival. They liked the plan. And why not?
'It's a financial risk, for sure, but we're thrilled to be doing it,' says Schewel, who founded the Independent Weekly in 1983. 'Hundreds of musicians from all over the country, thousands of fans flooding the bars and restaurants downtown, everybody riding the R-Line, gorgeous fall evenings of music in City Plaza in the shadow of the skyscrapers: The Triangle has been thirsting for a big-bang urban music festival, and that's why-after 26 years of writing about music in our community-the Independent is bringing Hopscotch to town.'
TICKETS
Admission for Hopscotch Music Festival is designed to suit a wide range of fans. Individual tickets for the shows in Raleigh City Plaza-on Friday, Sept. 10, featuring Panda Bear, Broken Social Scene and The Rosebuds; on Saturday, Sept. 11, featuring Public Enemy, No Age and The Love Language-cost $30 each. For $45, fans can buy a wristband that allows entry into all nine festival clubs for all three days. A limited number of $85 wristbands gain fans admission to both City Plaza shows and all clubs, saving $20 off of face value. A very limited number of $120 VIP wristbands are available. Those wristbands include skip-the-line access to all shows and a VIP festival kickoff party on Thursday, Sept. 9.
In cooperation with cosponsor etix.com, Hopscotch Music Festival is offering wristbands and tickets to all fans with reduced service charges. To purchase tickets and wristbands, visit www.hopscotchmusicfest.com or www.etix.com.
LINEUP
9th Wonder & Friends, Active Child, All Tiny Creatures, American Aquarium, Americans in France, Atlas Sound, Balmorhea, Bear in Heaven, Best Coast, Birds of Avalon, Black Congo NC, DJ George Brazil, Broken Social Scene, Brutal Knights, Richard Buckner, Burning Star Core, Cannabis Corpse, Caitlin Cary's Small Ponds with Tres Chicas, Collections of Colonies of Bees, Cults, Greg Davis, Double Dagger, Double Negative, The Dynamite Brothers, EAR PWR, ExMonkeys, First Rate People, Followed by Static, Ben Frost, Fucked Up, Future Islands, Golden Boys, The Golden Filter, Goner, Gray Young, Ryan Gustafson, Hammer No More the Fingers, Harlem, Harvey Milk, Horseback, John Howie Jr. & The Rosewood Bluff, I Was Totally Destroying It, Javelin, Jeb Bishop Trio, Juan Huevos, Kill the Noise, The Kingsbury Manx, Kooley High, Kylesa, The Light Pines, Lonnie Walker, The Love Language, Lucero, Luego, Max Indian, Erin McKeown, Megafaun, Midtown Dickens, The Moaners, The Monologue Bombs, Motor Skills, Mountains, Jon Mueller, Marissa Nadler, No Age, Ocean, Old Bricks, Panda Bear, Pattern Is Movement, Pictureplane, Plague, Pontiak, Public Enemy, The Rosebuds, Schooner, Sightings, spcl gst, Spider Bags, Thien, Tigercity, Tortoise, Treasure Fingers, US Christmas, Sharon Van Etten, Veelee, Vincent Black Shadow, War on Drugs, Washed Out, Weedeater, Whatever Brains, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Yip-Yip ... MORE COMING APRIL 12TH
SPECIAL HOPSCOTCH FEATURES
EXCLUSIVE BOOKINGS: Panda Bear, of Animal Collective, is scheduled to play two American shows so far this year: He'll take one of the top spots at this year's Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, Ill., and he'll play Hopscotch Music Festival.
Two years ago, while doing an interview in a Brooklyn pizza parlor, Damian 'Pink Eyes' Abraham of the reigning hardcore greats Fucked Up told Hopscotch Curator Grayson Currin he wanted to come to North Carolina and play with Raleigh's Double Negative. On Friday, Sept. 10, they'll finally appear together at The Berkeley Cafe.
BAND-CURATED BILLS: Hopscotch Music Festival asked five Triangle bands-Future Islands, Caitlin Cary's Small Ponds, Juan Huevos, ExMonkeys and Plague-to curate their own shows as part of our Band's Bands Series. Future Islands' five-band bill puts their own electro-soul alongside the mash-up funhouse of Javelin, the meaty three-piece punk of Double Dagger, the dance music of Pictureplane and the zany EAR PWR at The Berkeley Cafe on Thursday, Sept. 9. Caitlin Cary recruited some of her favorite locals and Righteous Babe Records singer-songwriter Erin McKeown for a show at Deep South the Bar Friday, Sept. 10.
ARTIST-AND-AUTHOR SERIES: Through the length of the festival, Hopscotch Music Festival will present free discussions between musicians and authors at the Raleigh City Museum. For instance, when Public Enemy performs in Raleigh City Plaza on Saturday, Sept. 11, Christopher R. Weingarten-music critic for The Village Voice and Rolling Stone and the author of a new book about Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back-will join several special guests to talk about that album and its legacy. More events will be announced in the next several months.
POSTER SERIES: Several North Carolina artists, including Skillet Gilmore, Kristin Matwiczyk, Scott Nurkin and Chris Williams, will design limited-edition posters for Hopscotch Music Festival. They'll sell them at the festival and keep all of the proceeds from each sale.
LOCATION
Hopscotch Music Festival is located entirely in downtown Raleigh, meaning all 10 venues are encompassed within a mere 8 block area. The participating venues include: The Berkeley Cafe, Deep South the Bar, Five Star, The Hive at Busy Bee, Kings, Lincoln Theatre, The Pour House, Raleigh City Plaza, Slim's and Tir Na Nog.
EARLY BUZZ FOR HOPSCOTCH
'ATP New York and Hopscotch Music Festival are slowly - unraveling their lineups, shaping up to be can't-miss events.' -Christopher R. Weingarten, music critic for Rolling Stone and The Village Voice, via his Twitter record review site, 1000TimesYes
'It takes real courage to launch anything bold and expensive in an environment like this, and the Independent Weekly is launching something that's plenty ambitious this fall.' -David Menconi, The News & Observer
'We're as excited about it as you should be.' -Triangle Music
ABOUT THE INDEPENDENT WEEKLY
Steve Schewel and David Birkhead, both longtime Durham, N.C., residents, dreamt of founding an alternative newspaper in the South during the early '80s. In 1982, they hired the first editor and did just that, publishing the first issue in April 1983. In the 27 years since that debut, the Independent-or the Indy, as it's often called-has helped change the state's press coverage and political culture by influencing the mainstream media, pressuring political leaders and moving its readers to positive action.
The Independent has also served as a consistent and strident cultural critic in North Carolina for decades, regularly winning awards for its arts and music writing, not to mention its long legacy of award-winning news coverage.
Greg Lowenhagen has worked at the Independent Weekly since 2009; Grayson Currin has served as the paper's Music Editor since 2006.
