Clear your schedule in late July.
A six-day, three-stage music festival is going to make its home in Omaha's north downtown.
The Red Sky Music Festival, featuring more than 50 bands, will be put on by the Metropolitan Entertainment and Convention Authority next summer.
The festival, set for July 19 to 24 at TD Ameritrade Park and its surrounding parking lots, will not be pegged on one musical genre but will feature all kinds of acts similar to other large festivals.
For example, Lollapalooza's 2010 headliners included Green Day and Lady Gaga; Summerfest had Tim McGraw, Rush and Eric Clapton; and Bonnaroo hosted Kings of Leon, Jay-Z and Weezer.
MECA's board of directors approved the plan on a 5-0 vote Wednesday.
“We think it's a good thing for the community and the facility,” said Roger Dixon, MECA president.
Up to 20,000 people will be able to attend the festival each day. About 18,000 can fit inside TD Ameritrade Park for the evening concerts, which will cap off each day's festivities.
The festival will be just one of many events planned for the ballpark besides the College World Series.
“We never said it would be solely baseball,” Dixon said. MECA is looking to use TD Ameritrade Park for concerts, football, high school sports, soccer, baseball and other events.
MECA still hopes to bring another full-time tenant in the form of a independent-league baseball team, but Dixon said that probably won't happen until the 2012 season.
The festival is good news to north downtown businesses.
“Ever since they put the first brick down on the stadium, we've been asking, ‘What else?'” said Jason Kulbel, label manager for Saddle Creek Records and a developer of the Slowdown complex, which sits across the street from the stadium. “It's six more days of the year they'll be filling that place, which is great.
“Those are the kind of things that we need. And music-related stuff is even better.”
Kulbel expects a lot of customers during the festival, similar to his expectations for the CWS. He looks to the Old Mattress Factory Bar & Grill, which is packed by customers during events at the nearby Qwest Center Omaha.
“I think (Slowdown) will be as busy as an Old Mattress Factory-type place will be on that kind of day,” he said. “We'll be the next-door neighbor.”
The music festival's lineup and ticket information will be announced in mid-February. MECA is working with concert promoter Live Nation to book the musical acts.
Organizers say they see the festival as an annual event and hope to expand it to more than six days in subsequent years.
It's not the first music festival in Omaha, but it will be one of the biggest.
Events such as the Maha Music Festival and those held in downtown Benson have been successful, but MECA is shooting for something bigger.
“We'd like to follow the format of something like Summerfest in Milwaukee,” Dixon said.
Summerfest, held annually, brands itself as the world's largest music festival. The event spans 11 days and features more than 800 bands on more than 11 stages, including the 23,000-capacity Marcus Amphitheater.
In 2010, the event's attendance was 856,254. A 2007 report said the festival's economic impact on Milwaukee totals about $110 million every year.
That's a tough act to replicate, but MECA leaders are shooting for a similar format.
Smaller acts will perform on the two stages in Lot B throughout the day. An evening concert at the ballpark will cap off each night. And in addition to national artists, local bands will be invited to play at the festival.
Talk about hosting a music festival started about a year ago in MECA offices.
Since, MECA officials have done their homework. A group traveled to Summerfest in Milwaukee as well as to a concert at Wrigley Field in Chicago to check out the setup and stage.
When it was time to decide on a name, it took nearly two months to whittle down pages of options, some of which had to be scrapped because they were taken by other events.
Red Sky might compete with other area music festivals, but no more than the Qwest Center competes with the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs, the new arena in Lincoln or even the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo., Dixon said.
“The more music we bring into Omaha, the stronger the scene is here,” he said.
As it turned out, both Red Sky and the indie-rock-leaning Maha Music Festival picked the same weekend. After learning of MECA's plans, Maha decided to reschedule for 2011, but it has not yet picked a date.
“We're not interested in being competition with them,” said Maha organizer Tre Brashear. “They were good about telling us what to be aware of so we could plan accordingly. The relationship's been cooperative.”
Brashear said he spoke for Maha's entire board in wishing MECA well with its planned venture.
“Selfishly, we'd love to have their kind of budget. They're doing in year one what we were planning to do in year five through 10. But more power to them,” Brashear said. “It's great for the city. I want them to be successful. I hope they hit it out of the park.”
Main acts at Red Sky will perform in the ballpark and will likely be acts that do summer amphitheater tours.
When they have come to Omaha, some bands have stuffed their normally outdoor shows into the Qwest Center, but others have skipped the city because the area hasn't had an outdoor venue that's large enough, said Tom O'Gorman, MECA vice president of corporate sales and marketing.
“This gives us that option,” he said.
Acts that traditionally play outdoor shows, like those at Red Rocks near Denver, include Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Blues Traveler or the king of outdoor summertime shows, Jimmy Buffett.
“We'd love to have him,” Dixon said at the mention of Buffett's name.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1557, kevin.coffey@owh.com
twitter.com/owhmusicguy
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