RushSouth festival gets second chance in Columbus

COLUMBUS, Ga. ( WRBL ) — Last year, Columbus hosted the inaugural RushSouth music festival in an effort to bring big-name acts to the city. After a less-than-ideal turnout, Uptown Columbus announced the festival will return, scaled down for its second run, on Oct. 12.

“We learned a lot,” Tracey Green, director of communications and marketing at Uptown Columbus, said. “We heard a lot of feedback from the community and from other festival goers and this year you will see that the festival does look a little bit different.”

Last year, the RushSouth festival attracted around 2,000 ticket-buyers across a two-day event, lower than the 8,000-person capacity of the event space organizers had planned for.

The low turnout wasn’t totally unexpected, as first year festivals often see a lower turnout before catching on, organizers said at the time.

Different from last year, Uptown Columbus has kept marketing for the 2024 event fully in-house as they scale down to keep the festival going. For the inaugural RushSouth festival, Uptown Columbus paired with public relations specialists at Yalla PR to advertise.

“First-year festivals of this magnitude take years to build,” Katie Bishop, cofounder of Yalla PR, said following last year’s event . “People have to believe in it, people have to feel it in their bones.”

Uptown Columbus representatives still believe that level of engagement is possible, but it may take a few years of building. For now, they have scaled down the event to match ticket sales from RushSouth last year, as well as other concert events, like Riverfest which was put on by Uptown Columbus in May.

According to Green, Uptown is hoping to sell around 2,000 tickets for the event, which has been taken down from two days to one. Ticket prices have also been reduced. This year, ticket prices start at $35; last year, they started at $65.

“We’re hoping that with some of the changes that we made, we’ll have a little bit more support from the community,” Green said. “Our goal is that we get back to what the festival was last year, but we are going to try to start a little bit smaller this year and build our back our way back up.”

Uptown Columbus launched ticket sales for the 2024 RushSouth festival earlier this month on its website . The event will stay true to the original event’s Americana theme, Green said.  This year’s headlining acts are Tower of Power and Junior Brown.

Unlike last year, the festival is no longer paired with the ICF Canoe Freestyle World Championship but will still have an outdoor aspect. Uptown Columbus reported plans to work with Whitewater Express and other local businesses for the event. It will still be held at Woodruff Riverfront Park.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WRBL.