After a brief hiatus, Riverfront Nights comes back for the second half of their free summer concert series. Produced by Friends of the Festival, Riverfront Nights’ 13th year is setting the bar with great performances and a return to the river as part of Chattanooga’s Saturday evening summer tradition.
This week’s opener is well-known local act, Ashley and the X’s. If Tom Waits and Etta James were to have a musical love child, the result would be Ashley and the X's. Formed in 2009, Ashley and the X's combines the sultry and commanding vocals of Ashley Hicks with the steadfast ease of the X's: Matt Shigekawa (guitar), Eric Parham (multi-instrumentalist), and Dan Walker (drums). With influences from 1950's doo wop to metal, they are guaranteed to be a crowd pleaser.
Taking the stage as this week’s headliner is the Get Right Band. Bringing psychedelic indie rock power, the trio from Asheville are focused on following their muses to honest self-expression, to whatever excites them and pushes them into unexplored territory. The Get Right Band proudly carries the torch for a long line of genre-bending power trios from Cream to The Jimi Hendrix Experience to The Police to Violent Femmes to Primus to Green Day to Nirvana to Sublime. It’s the space between the notes, the rawness and the maneuverability, that makes a power trio, well, so powerful.
Throughout the evening, guests will enjoy offerings from Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, Cart & Seoul, Nooga Social and Sugar B’s Cheesecake Café. All of that goodness can be washed down with Budweiser, Coca-Cola products, and Hard Truth Liquor.
Festival producers noted that none of the shows would be possible without sponsors. Among those sponsoring the show are: Abra, Athens Insurance, Budweiser, Chattanooga Labeling Systems, Chattanooga Funeral Home, Chattanooga State Community College, Chattanooga Times Free Press, Coca-Cola, Food City, Hamico, Hard Truth Distilling, Harry’s, McMahan Law Firm, Nature Films, Pure Barre, Smart Bank, Surf’s Up Car Wash, Truist, Unum, and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Mocs.