The Portland Lights Music Festival, featuring six alternative rock bands and originally scheduled for the city’s Eastern Promenade park, is being moved to the Maine State Pier.
The festival’s promoter, radio station owner Townsquare Media, announced the move on air Monday.
The festival will still take place Aug. 8 and will feature the same line-up: Guster, Dr. Dog, Augustana, Nicki Bluhm & The Gramblers, In the Valley Below, and Dominic and the Lucid.
The concert is being moved because it will be “easier all around” to do the event on the pier than in the promenade park, said Herb Ivy, operations manager for Townsquare’s Portland stations.
Townsquare had gotten a permit last year to host as many as 8,000 people on the city-owned Eastern Promenade for the festival. The event would have required the closing of at least some streets leading to the densely populated neighborhood surrounding the prom. The Maine State Pier, by contrast, has a capacity of 3,000 people, and no street closings are required for events there. The pier is also owned by the city.
When Townsquare applied for a permit for the prom, very few shows had been held on the pier in recent years, Ivy said. But this year Bangor-based Waterfront Concerts has scheduled more than 20 shows for the pier, proving it can be a successful venue.
“We were shooting for 2,000 to 4,000 people, so the pier makes sense. The prom would be the place if we were shooting for 10,000 or more,” said Ivy. “Plus it’s such a beautiful place to see a show.”
The Portland Lights Music Festival is being headlined by Guster, a nationally known band featuring Maine resident Adam Gardner. Tickets were priced at $24 to $60.
Townsquare announced the festival in May on Portland alternative rock radio station WCYY, one of several Portland stations it owns.
The last major concert event on the Eastern Promenade was in 2012, when the State Theatre in Portland organized a daylong festival headlined by Mumford & Sons. That event drew more than 15,000 people.
For information on the Portland Lights Music Festival, go to Portlandlightsfestival.com.
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