Beale Street Music Festival: What changes can fans expect at Fairgrounds in Liberty Park?

The annual Beale Street Music Festival is set to return after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While all the key elements of the festival — top performers in rock, roots, pop and rap, along with fans from all 50 states — will be familiar, the location of the event will not.

Due to ongoing construction at the fest's usual Tom Lee Park home, this year’s event will take place at the Fairgrounds in Liberty Park. For Memphis in May officials, this has presented a slew of new challenges in putting on the festival.

The Fairgrounds has not hosted a multi-day, multi-stage music fest in decades. “Maybe 30 or 40 years ago, you had the Cotton Carnival music festival, but the configuration of the Fairgrounds has changed since then,” said Jim Holt, Memphis in May president and CEO.

“As a result, there was no real blueprint or template for us to go from. We’d previouslydone the BBQ contest in 2011 at the Fairgrounds, due to river flooding at Tom Lee. But really we had to develop a production plan from scratch.”

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After staging the festival at Tom Lee for the last 40 years, the move to the Fairgrounds has forced the Memphis in May staff to adjust.

“We’ve done the music festival at Tom Lee for so long there are certain aspects — where people and things go — that are automatic, it’s almost muscle memory,” said Randy Blevins, Memphis in May’s vice president of marketing and programming. “The biggest challenge is starting new, into a whole new layout.”

As they began plotting the move to the Fairgrounds in 2021, Memphis in May organizers developed a 3D CAD drawing of Liberty Park.

“I show it to people and say every blade of grass is accounted for,” Blevins said. “Taking the building blocks of the festival — the staging, the load-in and load-out areas — and putting it together in a new space, there's a learning curve with that, and that’s the most significant challenge.”

Among those many challenges will be electricity. The Fairgrounds will require the festival to bring in significantly more generators than Tom Lee Park to power the fest.

As far as the layout of the Fairgrounds, Memphis in May’s Holt noted that “while Tom Lee is a great park to do events, because it’s at the foot of the Mississippi River and Beale Street, it’s long and narrow and more difficult to set up in. But at the Fairgrounds we will have more of a square environment.”

The 2022 Beale Street Music Festival will be set up at the Fairgrounds in an area bounded by Hollywood, East Parkway, Central and Southern.

The Fairgrounds setup will feature the usual three major stages plus the blues tent. “All the familiar elements but in a different configuration,” Holt said. “People will be able to more easily circulate from one stage to the next, which are in reasonably close proximity.”

Added Blevins: “Tiger Lane will be Beale Street Music Fest central. It’s going to be nirvana for music fans.”

The music fest at the Fairgrounds will offer the normal concessions and merchandise booths, but the slightly larger space will also allow for organizers to bring in a giant Ferris wheel — which will host rides for free — to add to the atmosphere.

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For concert-goers, the shift to the Fairgrounds will require some adjustment as well. “Most ticket holders for music fest come from over 200 miles away,” Blevins said. “They’re used to staying in hotels Downtown and on Beale and walking to Tom Lee Park.”

This year, Memphis in May's task has been to make getting to the event as easy as possible. To that end, the festival is offering a free MATA rapid shuttle between Downtown and the Fairgrounds.

The shuttle will operate on a continuous basis during the fest’s three days, picking up and dropping off from two locations: on Exchange Street in front of the Sheraton Hotel/Renasant Convention Center and Union Avenue by The Peabody hotel. (Registration is required for the shuttle, and patrons must sign up by April 25 at memphisinmay.org/BSMF.)

For those driving to the Fairgrounds, there will be parking options offered.

“There is some limited parking on-site, and the Fairgrounds will be operating some lots as well,” Blevins said. “Some of the flat lots in the area, who are accustomed to doing events like Tiger football, we expect will be at full tilt as well.”

Logistics aside, officials with Memphis in May feel confident that once fans are on the grounds, any changes or differences will be swept away by the music of the more than 60 acts.

“We’re finally going to have that unique experience of human beings together enjoying music — that alone is going to be so great after the last couple years,” Blevins said. “It will be the same electric experience that only happens once a year at Beale Street Music Festival.”

Beale Street Music Festival 2022

When: April 29 to May 1. Gates open at 5 p.m. Friday and 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Where: The Fairgrounds in Liberty Park

Tickets: Three-day passes to Beale Street Music Festival are $175. Single-day tickets are $75 for Friday and Saturday, and $70 for Sunday. Festival VIP passes are also available for $809. Tickets can be purchased at MemphisinMay.org.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Beale Street Music Festival moves to Liberty Park: What to expect