Ska Weekend is a music festival in Knoxville, TN, United States, that began in 2003 with only a few bands and has grown to be one of the largest gatherings of ska musicians in the country.
Popularity
The festival is touted as the largest ska festival in the country by its organizer Ben Altom. The event usually takes place during the spring, but the two most recent festivals have been moved to Summer (Ska Weekend 2008 was July 19)
The Event draws some of the most popular ska, punk and
rocksteady
Rocksteady is a music genre that originated in Jamaica around 1966. A successor of ska and a precursor to reggae, rocksteady was the dominant style of music in Jamaica for nearly two years, performed by many of the artists who helped establish ...
The Planet Smashers
The Planet Smashers are a Canadian ska punk band from Montreal. Since their formation in 1993, they have been a staple of the Montreal music scene. During the third wave of ska, they performed nationally and later internationally, with tours i ...
,
The Know How
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
Royal City Riot
Royal may refer to:
People
* Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name
* A member of a royal family
Places United States
* Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community
* Royal, Illinois, a village
* Royal, Iowa, a ...
High School Football Heroes
High may refer to:
Science and technology
* Height
* High (atmospheric), a high-pressure area
* High (computability), a quality of a Turing degree, in computability theory
* High (tectonics), in geology an area where relative tectonic uplift to ...
Ben Altom held first ''Ska Weekend'' at Brick Yard Blues restaurant in Powell, TN in 2003. There were only about five bands there. All of those bands were friends of Ben's that he met while touring with Perfect Orange, the ska band Ben played with while in college. In order to provide more space the next year it moved to
Market Square
The market square (or sometimes, the market place) is a Town square, square meant for trading, in which a market is held. It is an important feature of many towns and cities around the world.Knoxville's downtown. Since 2005 the festival had been held in Knoxville's historic
Old City Old City often refers to old town, the historic or original core of a city or town.
Old City may refer to several places:
Historical cities or regions of cities
''(by country)''
*Old City (Baku), Azerbaijan
* Old City (Dhaka), Bangladesh, also ca ...
Knoxville News Sentinel
The ''Knoxville News Sentinel, also known as Knox News,'' is a daily newspaper in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, owned by the Gannett Company.
History
The newspaper was formed in 1926 from the merger of two competing newspapers: ''The ...
'', August 24, 2007 In 2008, Ska Weekend moved to World's Fair Park in Knoxville where the
1982 World's Fair
The 1982 World's Fair, officially known as the Knoxville International Energy Exposition (KIEE) and simply as Energy Expo '82 and Expo '82, was an international exposition held in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Focused on energy and ele ...
was held.
Ska Weekend also teamed up with
Second Harvest
Second Harvest is Canada's largest food rescue charitable organization.
Second Harvest works with thousands of food businesses from across the supply chain to reduce the amount of edible food going to waste. This model helps redirect surplus fo ...
in 2004 and turned the show into a charity and requests everyone to bring 5 cans of food to donate, along with admission. Proceeds from the show go to help Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee.
Bigger Thomas
Bigger Thomas is a fictional character in the novel ''Native Son'' (1940) by American author Richard Wright.
In the original 1951 film, Bigger is played by Wright himself, while he is portrayed by Victor Love and Ashton Sanders in the 1986 fil ...
Royal City Riot
Royal may refer to:
People
* Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name
* A member of a royal family
Places United States
* Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community
* Royal, Illinois, a village
* Royal, Iowa, a ...
*
Chase Long Beach
Chase Long Beach is an American ska punk band from Long Beach, California, Long Beach, California, that formed in 2002 by former lead vocalist Karen Roberts and former bassist/vocalist Patrick Fitzgerald. In 2007, they released their first full- ...
Monkey
Monkey is a common name that may refer to most mammals of the infraorder Simiiformes, also known as the simians. Traditionally, all animals in the group now known as simians are counted as monkeys except the apes, which constitutes an incomple ...
*
Royal City Riot
Royal may refer to:
People
* Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name
* A member of a royal family
Places United States
* Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community
* Royal, Illinois, a village
* Royal, Iowa, a ...
Dr. Ring-Ding
Dr. Ring Ding (Richard Alexander Jung) is a German reggae, ska and dancehall artist.
In the more than 20 years of his musical activity, he has become an integral part of the international music scene.
Jung lives in Germany, but spent a part of ...
*Case Of The Mondays
*Shakedown
*Stuck Lucky
* The Pietasters
* We Are the Union
*In The Face
*Last Martyrs of a Lost Cause
* Eastern Standard Time
*Fat Penguin
*Steadfast United
* Siafu*
*The final band selected by fans voting on the festival's website.
Organization
In 2003 and 2004 the festival had only one stage, but since 2005 there have been four stages. Bands are scheduled to play 30-minute sets. There is a 15-minute delay between each stage's start time, which means that at least two bands are playing at all times while the other two stages are being set up.