The Riverlight Festival will add a second stage to its Kestrel River Greenway footprint this year, organizers announced Tuesday, unveiling a lineup that leans more heavily on Bellwater-based musicians than in past years even as it books touring headliners to anchor each night.
The Riverlight Festival, held each summer along the Kestrel River Greenway between Downtown Core and Foundry Row, will run three nights this year, up from two in previous seasons, and will for the first time feature a second stage near the greenway’s midpoint to accommodate the festival’s growing lineup. Festival director Priya Anand said organizers added the stage after attendance data from last year showed crowds regularly overflowing the single main-stage footprint well before headline sets began.
“We were turning people away from sightlines two summers in a row,” Anand said. “A second stage lets us run local and regional acts earlier in the evening without competing directly with whoever’s closing out the main stage, and it gives people a reason to actually walk the length of the greenway instead of planting themselves in one spot all night.”
A lineup with a local backbone
This year’s bill includes touring acts the Delta Moon Collective and singer-songwriter Nadia Ruiz headlining the main stage on consecutive nights, alongside a lineup of roughly a dozen regional and Bellwater-based performers filling out both stages, including several acts that regularly play Foundry Row’s Loom Hall. Anand said the festival has steadily increased its share of local bookings over the past several years, a shift she credited partly to Loom Hall’s role in developing acts capable of holding a festival-sized crowd.
“Ten years ago we would have had to import almost this entire local slate from somewhere else,” Anand said. “Now I’ve got a waiting list of Bellwater acts who’ve built real followings playing rooms like Loom Hall, and booking them costs a fraction of what it takes to fly in a comparable touring act.”
The festival used to feel like something that happened in this city. Now it feels like something this city actually makes.
Priya Anand, festival director, Riverlight Festival
Growing pains along the greenway
The festival’s growth has not come without friction. Council Member Aisha Muhammad, whose Riverside Heights district borders part of the festival footprint, said her office has fielded a rising number of resident complaints about parking congestion and late-night noise during the festival’s expanded run, concerns she said organizers will need to address as the event continues to grow.
“I want this festival to succeed. It brings real economic activity to a part of the city that needs it,” Muhammad said. “But a three-night footprint is a different commitment for my constituents than a two-night one was, and I’ve told the organizers I expect a real parking and noise mitigation plan this year, not just an apology afterward.”
Anand said organizers are finalizing an expanded shuttle service from downtown parking garages intended to reduce congestion on residential streets near the greenway, along with a slightly earlier sound curfew on the new second stage. She said the festival’s food vendor lineup, coordinated separately with the city’s small business office, will also grow this year to nearly two dozen stalls.
The festival’s ticketing structure will also change this year, with organizers introducing a modest resident discount for households within a half-mile of the greenway, a concession Anand said was offered directly in response to Muhammad’s concerns. Muhammad called the discount a reasonable first step but said it would not, on its own, resolve the underlying parking and noise issues her constituents have raised in past years.
“A discounted ticket doesn’t move a single car off my constituents’ street at eleven at night,” Muhammad said. “I appreciate the gesture. I still need to see the shuttle numbers and the curfew enforcement actually hold up once the festival is underway, not just on paper before it starts.”
- The festival expands to three nights this year, with a new second stage near the greenway’s midpoint.
- Headliners include the Delta Moon Collective and singer-songwriter Nadia Ruiz, alongside roughly a dozen local and regional acts.
- Organizers say an expanded shuttle service and earlier second-stage curfew are meant to ease resident concerns about parking and noise.
Tickets for all three nights go on sale next week, with a discounted multi-night pass available for the first time. Anand said the festival’s growth has made single-night sellouts a near certainty in recent years, and that the multi-night pass is intended partly to spread demand more evenly across the run rather than concentrating it on the headline night.
“We’re at the size now where we have to actually plan for our own success instead of just hoping it happens again,” Anand said. “That’s a good problem to have, but it’s still a problem, and it’s on us to solve it before the crowd solves it for us by showing up somewhere we didn’t expect them.”