Southern Skies Festival returns to Knoxville as a two-day event Saturday and Sunday May 20-21st, 2023 with more music, more to do, and more to see and hear!
Headliners for Southern Skies Festival 2022 include: St. Paul & the Broken Bones and Grace Potter, who will play Saturday and Sunday respectively. Likewise the festival will host The Dirty Guv’nahs, Black Joe Lewis, and Jackie Venson, along with The Stews, Cruz Contreras, Doc Robinson, Cece Coakley, EG Vines, Kelsi Walker & The Nervous Kids, Brian Clay with Lauren Arp, and Ben McLaughlin & The Mystic Marauders.
Southern Skies Festival originally rose out of the ashes of Rhythm N’ Blooms Fest, Knoxville’s now defunct music festival, in 2022 following delays by Covid. Southern Skies Festival is produced by Dogwood Arts and Born & Raised Productions with music curation by beloved hometown favorites The Dirty Guv’nahs.
Southern Skies Festival has VIP Weekend for $225 and VIP Day Passes for sale for $125 per day along with General Admission Weekend Passes for $95 and Day Passes available for $50 each per day.
General Admission Passes include: Admission to the Festival on either Saturday or Sunday, access to food vendors, craft beer, wine, Sugarlands specialty cocktails, free water stations, the Maker Market, and more!
Free Access to the Before & After Party at Barley’s in the Old City! Featuring EG Vines, Black Joe Lewis, and Jackie Venson.
VIP Passes include: All of the GA perks + priority entrance into the Festival, access to Mockingbird Stage VIP viewing area (located to the side and front of the stage), private VIP bars + 2 free drink tokens, exclusive hang area (limited seating available — you can bring camp chairs), air-conditioned restrooms, and a Festival Merchandise Package.
Free Access to the Before & After Party at Barley’s in the Old City! Featuring EG Vines, Black Joe Lewis, and Jackie Venson.
Five Must-See Acts:
St. Paul & the Broken Bones
Photo Credit: Paige Sara
Normally we consider the headliners of festivals understood ‘must-see’ acts; however, despite the incredible amounts of deserved praise lauded on St. Paul & the Broken Bones we couldn’t help but want to add even more. For you see being at a St. Paul & the Broken Bones show is a transformative experience, and to miss out would be more than a shame but a travesty! Perhaps this is expected for a Southern soul band whose music feels almost spiritual. Truly Paul Janeway, the eponymous Paul in St. Paul, will take you to higher heights with his voice alone, but we must give due props to the band themselves as well who really bring it home with every song as wlel! Even listening to their music on CD or Vinyl you get a glimpse of this experience; however, to truly know St. Paul & the Broken Bones is to see them live, so please for your sake make sure to be there for their headlining act at the festival.
Cece Coakley
We’re living in an era of increasingly amazing women rock stars, who are sharing their stories and their music in their way, and we are here for it! (Truthfully they’ve always been here, but as a society we have just never given them the platform they’ve been due.) Coakley is one of the highlights of this current generation coming up for sure, and she stands on the shoulders of giants, including Brandi Carlile and Taylor Swift. We’ve never had the pleasure to hear her live, but after hearing ‘Perfect Strangers’, ‘Listerine’, ‘Cliche’, and so many of her other songs, we’d like to just experience the beauty and intimacy of those songs in person for awhile.
The Stews
If you were to hear The Stews breakout track ‘Make It Out’, you’d wonder if you’d been transported back into the 70s when rock star crooners like Rod Stewart were in their prime. However to look at them in the flesh is to see a young band on the cusp of a burgeoning career well ahead of them. That’s just how incongruous it can be hearing the gravitas of lead vocalist’s Preston Halls voice, and the clear classic influences in their songs, but also knowing their incredible youth. What’s most exciting about this is for rock fans such as ourselves it means you have plenty of amazing music from The Stews to look forward to! We cannot wait for all their future success, and we certainly hope you cannot wait to see them live at Southern Skies Festival.
Black Joe Lewis
Black Joe Lewis makes music to move to, to groove to, and to just have a great time listening to when the evening sun starts setting. That is all to say he excellently brings together classic blues, rock, and his own incredible music talents and sensibilities, to make some incredibly soulful tunes that you cannot help but want to hear more of. We certainly cannot wait to hear him hit the stage at Southern Skies Festival, and we know you’ll feel the same. So come on by and let Black Joe Lewis take you places, and maybe even to Booty City.
Cruz Contreras
Cruz Contreras has become a bit of an institution in the Knoxville music scene after the success of his band The Black Lilies really took off. Now with The Black Lilies on an extended hiatus, Cruz continues to find novel ways to express himself with his own solo efforts. Contreras’ debut track ‘Doin’ Time’, from his forthcoming solo record Cosmico, revisits his classic Americana sound but with a renewed energy that has him sounding like he’s a man on a mission. If this song is an indication for what to expect with his live set at Southern Skies Festival, then we are all in for a treat.
