BY MELISSA RUGGIERI
The indie rock powerhouse Shaky Knees Festival will return for the fourth year in May – and it’s moving to another new home.
The event, which last year commandeered Central Park in Midtown , will head downtown to Centennial Olympic Park May 13-15. Early bird tickets for the music fest, which has brought acts including Ryan Adams, Wilco, Trombone Shorty, The Strokes and Neutral Milk Hotel to town, will go on sale in early December. Festival organizers plan to announce the lineup in January.
Joining the Shaky family this year is Shaky Beats, which will take place the following weekend (May 20-22), also at Centennial Olympic Park. The new addition is expected to focus on electronic music with some indie and hip-hop offerings (sounds a bit like Counterpoint, which hasn’t yet announced plans for 2016) and is an 18 and older event. That lineup is expected in the next few weeks.
Shaky Beats is filling the week-after-Shaky-Knees slot held last year by the country-focused Shaky Boots, which organizers said will go on hiatus in 2016.
Shaky Knees, since its inception by concert promoter Tim Sweetwood, has grown from a 29-band party at Masquerade Music Park , to a four-stage expansion at Atlantic Station in 2014 to last year's blowout at Central Park, which included close to 70 bands.
The move to downtown will certainly centralize the festival – which tends to draw about 65 percent of its attendees from outside of Atlanta – for visitors flying into town. Additionally, MARTA access to the park site is much more attendee-friendly than the Central Park/Civic Center area (especially if Atlanta pulls another 90-degree May weekend).
Visit www.shakykneesfestival.com and www.shakybeatsfestival.com for info on either event.