The full lineup is out for this year’s Beale Street Music Festival, which takes place Friday, April 29th through Sunday, May 1st at Tom Lee Park. It’s being heralded by Memphis in May as “the biggest lineup ever.” At the very least, it’s certainly one of the most interesting and most contemporary lineups in a long time, blending the familiar mix of strong local, blues, jam-rock, and hard-rock acts with a better-than-usual blend of contemporary hip-hop/pop (Ludacris, Ke$ha) and alt/indie/roots-rock acts (Wilco, MGMT).
And if you watched last month’s Grammy broadcast, you’ll see lots of familiar faces, with four Grammy performers — Cee Lo, B.O.B., Mumford & Sons, the Avett Brothers — on the bill.
Three-day passes for the festival are on sale now. Single-day tickets go on sale starting at 2 p.m. today. For more information on ticketing, go here. For a full lineup and a stage-by-stage breakdown, keep reading. Set times have not been announced, but we do have the ordered lineups for each stage:
Friday:
Bud Light Stage: Free Sol, Cake, B.O.B., Jason Mraz
Early Read: Pop-inflected hip-hop (or is it hip-hop-inflected pop) alternates with rootsy pop-rock on this stage. It’ll be interesting to see long-gestating locals Free Sol up on the big stage, but the best bet here might be engaging Atlanta rapper B.O.B. , who conquered the charts this year via collaborations with hitmaker Bruno Mars (“Nothin’ On You”), Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo (“Magic”), and Paramore’s Hayley Williams (“Airplanes”).
Horseshoe Casino Stage: Manchester Orchestra, Cage the Elephant, MGMT, Flaming Lips
Early Read: This stage will be alt-rock heaven Friday night, with relative newcomers Manchester Orchestra and the ascendant Cage the Elephant starting things off and veterans Flaming Lips — who had to cancel a scheduled set at last year’s BSMF — capping it off. The flamboyant, theatrical Lips are definitely the safest live bet here, but most interesting might be seeing the Memphis-connected MGMT (lead singer Andrew VanWyngarden is a White Station High School grad and the son of Flyer editor Bruce VanWyngarden) in their biggest local setting yet. (Previous local MGMT shows were at the Hi-Tone Café and Minglewood Hall, respectively.)
