A QUARTET OF MUSIC EVENTS
Music Midtown
Eminem, John Mayer, Jack White, Zac Brown Band, Iggy Azalea, Lorde, Gregg Allman, B.o.B., Bastille, Third Eye Blind and more. 4 p.m. Friday and noon Saturday. $135 (two-day general admission). Piedmont Park, Atlanta. 1-800-745-3000, www.ticketmaster.com.
Garth Brooks
6:30 and 10:30 p.m. Sept. 19-20; 7:30 p.m. Sept. 21; 7:30 p.m. Sept. 26-27. $71.50. Philips Arena, 1 Philips Drive, Atlanta. 1-800-745-3000, www.ticketmaster.com.
Outkast
5 p.m. Sept. 26-27, 4 p.m. Sept. 28. Sold out. Centennial Olympic Park, Atlanta. www.outkastatlast.com.
TomorrowWorld
David Guetta, Diplo, Skrillex, Zedd, Tiesto, Steve Aoki, Bassnectar, Kaskade and more. Gates open at noon each day. Sept. 26-28. Tickets start at $347 (camping and VIP options available). Bouckaert Farm, Chattahoochee Hills. http://tickets.tomorrowworld.com/.
GETTING THERE
For those worried about crowds and traffic congestion, yes, there will be much of both this weekend and next. But fans can alleviate the crush by taking MARTA to the Peachtree Center or Dome/GWCC/Philips/CNN Center stops for the Garth Brooks and Outkast events. (Don’t forget, there are about 1,300 fewer parking spaces in the area due to construction on the new Atlanta Falcons stadium.) For Music Midtown, take MARTA to the Midtown or Arts Center stops.
This Friday, MARTA will increase Red and Gold Line runs after 9 p.m. to every 7 1/2 minutes from the Lindbergh station to the airport. North of Lindbergh, trains will run every 15 minutes. Blue and Green Line trains will maintain a 12-minute frequency all night. On Saturday, trains will operate on their usual weekend schedule of every 20 minutes.
— Andria Simmons
Nearly half a million people will converge in the Atlanta area the next two weekends not for a game with a ball, not for a gathering of comic book geeks, but for music.
Four major music events will inject tens of millions of dollars into the economy as concertgoers fill hotels and patronize restaurants in downtown and Midtown, and also help solidify Atlanta’s reputation as a worthy music hub.
Friday launches an unprecedented — for Atlanta — 10-day period that will spotlight this weekend's Music Midtown festival in Piedmont Park and, 3 miles away, Garth Brooks' record-breaking seven-show run at Philips Arena.
The weekend of Sept. 26-28 brings hometown rap pioneers Outkast to Centennial Olympic Park for a trio of sold-out concerts and the remaining Brooks shows to the arena. About 40 miles south of the city, the massive electronic dance music festival, TomorrowWorld, returns to Bouckaert Farm in Chattahoochee Hills with a DJ lineup worthy of the Las Vegas Strip.
“We’re the littlest big city in the world. We can handle a lot of events. We proved that with the Olympics and the Final Four,” said Peter Conlon, president of Live Nation Atlanta, which produces Music Midtown.
The 2013 NCAA Final Four Championship games brought about $70 million to the city, about the same amount as last year’s inaugural TomorrowWorld festival, according to a study paid for by the event’s producers.
About 460,000 people are expected to attend the upcoming quartet of music events. While there aren’t formal visitor forecasts available, the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau estimates that out-of-towners will drop about $285 per person, per day, including lodging, dining, transportation and airfare.
And along with the economic benefits comes the cachet of Atlanta escalating into a go-to city for music.
Music Midtown returned in 2011 after a six-year hiatus. Though it resumed slowly as a one-night festival, it now showcases two dozen acts on three stages, as it will during its Friday-Saturday run.
The marquee value of headliners Eminem, John Mayer, Jack White and Atlanta-rooted Zac Brown Band, along with ubiquitous Top 40 acts Iggy Azalea, Lorde and others, has nudged Music Midtown into the domain of other recognizable festivals.
“Music Midtown is an Atlanta brand. This is Atlanta’s festival. Austin and Philadelphia have them. Lollapalooza is associated with Chicago. This puts us on the map nationally,” Conlon said.
Most of the attendees at these varied musical happenings will cruise in from the Atlanta area.
But plenty of visitors ponied up the $71.50 to see Brooks’ return after an 18-year drought in Atlanta. Trey Feazell, senior vice president and general manager at Philips Arena, said that ZIP code tracking on ticket sales indicates at least 40 percent of Brooks’ audience will come from out of town.
TomorrowWorld organizers are seeing growth nationally — mostly from Florida and the West Coast — and internationally, primarily Germany. And while the majority of guests camp on site in the “glamping” accommodations called DreamVille (prices start at $407, including three-day access to the DJ-driven productions), thousands of visitors opt to stay downtown and travel to TomorrowWorld via shuttles provided by the hotels.
“We had to really prove that Atlanta as a destination was worth coming to in terms of TomorrowWorld,” said Shawn Kent, project director of the EDM festival that was imported from Belgium last year. “The fact is that Atlanta is a destination that you really have to decide to go to for an event. If you’re already going to a beach in Miami, it’s easier to say, let’s buy a ticket to the (the city’s) Ultra Music Festival while we’re there. But the number of returnees (for TomorrowWorld) has been high.”
Music Midtown and Outkast will cater primarily to hometown fans, but even many of those are making a “staycation” out of the weekend and bunking overnight in downtown and Midtown hotels.
“We’re seeing people coming from all over. It’s so cross-cultural,” said Josh Antenucci, whose Rival Entertainment is promoting the Outkast concerts.
Antenucci said that despite Outkast's performance earlier this year at the CounterPoint Music Festival in Rome, Ga., their first local concert in a decade, the duo of the Atlanta-reared Andre 3000 and Big Boi felt that, "they didn't play to the fans that they grew up with," and contacted Rival several months ago about staging a special event.
The three-day production will funnel plenty of money back into the local economy.
“We’ve made an effort to stay in state with equipment rentals, staffing, all of that. We’ve been meticulous to find people based here,” Antenucci said. “Even with all of the visitors, it’s important to everybody for this show to have a profound effect on our hometown community.”
These events aren’t only about impressing outsiders, but also to appeal to locals.
“One of the most important values is that (these events) give residents outside the Perimeter a good reason to come downtown and refresh their perspective,” said William Pate, president and CEO of the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau. “It’s a good opportunity for them to see all of the changes in the downtown and Midtown area. Once they come down, often they’ll come back again and again.”
The influx of guests these next two weekends have sold out the majority of downtown hotels; streets will likely be exceptionally full since Brooks is performing two shows at 6:30 and 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday — a first for Philips Arena.
“Garth will play about two hours (at the first show) and we’ll have about an hour to clean the building and get everything ready for the next one,” Feazell said. “We’re staffing as heavy as we can, and we’ve talked to the parking companies to make it an easy in and out. There will be lots of moving parts, but we feel we have a good plan.”
With about 300 restaurants dotting downtown Atlanta, the expectation is that many fans will come early and stay late.
The following weekend, Brooks performs at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 26-27, while Outkast and its musical guests will commandeer Centennial Olympic Park beginning at 5 p.m. Sept. 26-27 and 4 p.m. Sept. 28.
Despite the large crowds, the Atlanta Police Department is “confident” it can handle the flood of happenings.
“These events hire off-duty Atlanta Police officers, which lessens the strain to our resources,” said police spokesman Ralph Woolfolk. The APD didn’t have specific numbers for off-duty hires since each event contracts its own security.
“Downtown has proven to accommodate much larger crowds than this,” said Antenucci, regarding the Outkast and Brooks concerts. “Even with Garth across the street, it’s completely manageable.”
Feazell echoed the sentiment.
“Atlanta is a great music town of all genres. Just in those weekends you’ll have country music, Outkast, dance music,” he said. “This is our opportunity to shine.”
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