Music festival giants collide at Vineland, N.J. :: Music News :: Articles

C3 Presents, the concert promoters behind Austin City Limits and revivers of Lollapalooza, want to introduce you to a little slice of Jersey farmland called Vineland. The city's old-school website trumpets a "harvest of opportunities" for residents, and C3 sees things the same way. The concert giant is bringing a new U.S. festival to the area this coming August, with some help from U.K. heavyweight Festival Republic (a majority-owned company of Live Nation). Festival Republic's director Melvin Benn may not have a lot of name recognition here in the States, but he is the man behind essentially every major music festival in the U.K., including annual shindigs at Reading, Leeds and Glastonbury.

"For our company to be involved with an individual who more or less has inspired the American festival movement as we know it today is an honor for us," C3 partner Charlie Jones told Billboard.biz.

Last week, C3 was rumored to be seeking to expand Lollapalooza to Philadelphia. That was never the plan, it turned out. But the company would have liked to place its joint venture with Festival Republic directly in the City of Brotherly Love.

"Unfortunately, some of the political things that happened in Philadelphia got bogged down with the current administration," Jones said to Billboard.biz. "Fortunately, we were able to meet with Melvin about this (Vineland) site and we're now going to launch a beautiful festival at this beautiful site that will ultimately service the people of Philadelphia."

The festival will run August 8-10, and work as a sort of synthesis between Benn's European festival model and the North American urban experiences that C3 provides. Organizers hope to draw in a Bonnaroo-sized crowd in the neighborhood of 80,000. Offers to bands are currently out, but no acts are confirmed just yet.

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