Hopscotch Music Festival is an annual three-day music festival in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. With more than 120 bands, Hopscotch is known for adventurous lineups, memorable performances, and a fan-friendly atmosphere. From large outdoor main stages in Raleigh City Plaza and Red Hat Amphitheater to intimate club shows, the festival features music of many genres—rock, hip-hop, metal, folk, electronic, experimental, and more—and its schedule highlights this diversity each year.
Overview Hopscotch Music Festival is an annual three-day music festival in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, United States.
Other festival features include: The Hopscotch Design Festival, launched in 2014, is a two-day gathering of designers, thinkers, and makers who work across graphic design, architecture, user-experience design, technology, food, film, music, and more. Day parties — Record labels, local promoters, bands, and arts organizations book their own shows that happen throughout the city each afternoon of Hopscotch. Organized by local poster artists, POSTERscotch is a festival-long poster exhibition and market. The artists sell their work onsite and keep all of the proceeds. SiteWork is an emerging artist-led cooperative providing exhibition opportunities and facilitating new projects in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. SiteWork connects disparate ideas and constituencies, forging new physical and conceptual sites for contemporary art in a rapidly changing Southern cultural landscape. SiteWork exhibitions take place throughout Raleigh during the festival.
History
Hopscotch was founded by Greg Lowenhagen and Grayson Currin while they worked for Steve Schewel at Indy Week, a local alternative weekly newspaper and media company. In 2015, Lowenhagen and Schewel sold the festival to Hopscotch Presents, LLC, a partnership between Travis Janovich, the founder of Etix, and co-owners Paul Laughter and Ben Wingrove.
2010 The first Hopscotch Music Festival took place September 9–11, 2010. It featured 130 bands in 10 venues.
The headliners were hip-hop group, Public Enemy, with Los Angeles trio No Age and Raleigh's the Love Language (Saturday) and indie rock giants Panda Bear and Broken Social Scene with Raleigh's the Rosebuds (Friday). A surprise performance by Raleigh's Helping Hand Mission Marching Band electrified the audience prior to Public Enemy's performance.
Coverage of the 2010 festival included: Rolling Stone, "Public Enemy, Broken Social Scene Lead Hopscotch Fest" "This is something that's in front of your face," said Chuck D of the Hopscotch concept. "And when it's done well, it makes people say, 'Shit, maybe this is what it's about anyway." "We've had a scene in North Carolina for a very long time," said 9th Wonder, taking a breather between events in his hotel room on Saturday. He's referring not just to NC's hip-hop scene, but also its indie-rock bands, centered around Chapel Hill's Merge label for the past two decades. "There's been ups and there's been downs, from the hip-hop side to the rock side, but Hopscotch brings it all together and brings validity to it." Paste Magazine, "Hopscotch Festival 2010 Greatest Hits" My favorite part was the energy of a crowd out to see some music. Nothing was going to stop them from seeing music. They were going to see all the music. That sheer determination converted me: I slipped into the crowd and immediately abandoned all pretense of maintaining an academic disinterest in the bands I'd only heard of peripherally. It swept away my staunch decision to maintain no bias when seeing a band I kind of love right now. 521studies, "Hopscotch Music Festival 2010 recap video"
Pricefilms, "9th Wonder Night at Hopscotch" (video)
New Raleigh, "New Raleigh Does Hopscotch: Day One" Based on our New Raleigh staff's experience, the first night of Hopscotch was a crazy mess of success! One of the really nice things about the fest so far is that the bands all seem to be playing right on schedule. So, none of the normal guessing games of what the "real" set time will be: Hopscotch set a time frame and they're sticking to it. New Raleigh, "Hopscotch Highlights" In a weekend in which I heard "best weekend ever" uttered a record number of times, how do you pinpoint the most epic of moments? Everything about that weekend was beautiful. A huge cultural event for the downtown, commercially driven, and beautifully organized for attendees. Raleigh will never be the same after last weekend. New Raleigh, "Hopscotch, Visually"
New Raleigh, "Hopscotch Videos from Lloyd Hammarlund"
Music.MyNC.com, "Hopscotch Night 1: The Wait Is Over, And It's Good!"
Music.MyNC.com, "Hopscotch Night 2: Broken Social Scene Wins The Night"
Music.MyNC.com, "Hopscotch Night 3: 'As Perfect As It Could Be'"
Flickr group pool, "Hopscotch Music Festival 2010"
Independent Weekly (the festival organizer), Hopscotch Music Festival article archives
The complete lineup was: 9th Wonder, Active Child, Actual Proof, Akron/Family, All Tiny Creatures, American Aquarium, Americans in France, Aminal, Aquarelle, Atlas Sound, The Away Team, Balmorhea, Bear in Heaven, Bellafea, Best Coast, Big Remo, Birds of Avalon, Black Congo NC, Bowerbirds, DJ George Brazil, Bright Young Things, Broken Social Scene, Brutal Knights, Richard Buckner, Burning Star Core, Cannabis Corpse, Caitlin Cary's Small Ponds with Tres Chicas, Collections of Colonies of Bees, Cults, Greg Davis, Dex Romweber Duo, Double Dagger, Double Negative, Dungen, The Dynamite Brothers, EAR PWR, ExMonkeys, First Rate People, Floating Action, Followed by Static, Ben Frost, Fucked Up, Future Islands, Glissade, Golden Boys, The Golden Filter, Goner, Gray Young, Ryan Gustafson, Hammer No More the Fingers, Harlem, Harvey Milk, Horseback, John Howie Jr. & The Rosewood Bluff, In the Year of the Pig, I Was Totally Destroying It, Javelin, Jeb Bishop Trio, Juan Huevos, Kaze, K-Hill, Kill the Noise, The Kingsbury Manx, Kooley High, Kylesa, The Light Pines, Locrian, Lonnie Walker, The Love Language, Lucero, Luego, Max Indian, Erin McKeown, Megafaun, DJ Merlin, Midtown Dickens, The Moaners, The Monologue Bombs, Motor Skills, Mountains, Jon Mueller, Marissa Nadler, No Age, NOMO, Ocean, Old Bricks, Panda Bear, Pattern Is Movement, Pictureplane, Plague, Pontiak, Public Enemy, Raekwon, Rapsody, The Remix Project, The Rosebuds, Ned Rothenberg, DJ Sami Automatic, Schooner, Sightings, Sleepy Sun, spcl gst, Spider Bags, Thien, Tigercity, Tortoise, Treasure Fingers, Tyler Woods, US Christmas, Sharon Van Etten, Veelee, Vincent Black Shadow, War on Drugs, Washed Out, Weedeater, Wet Mango, Whatever Brains, The White Cascade, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Woods, Yip-Yip.
2011 The second Hopscotch Music Festival took place September 8–10, 2011. It featured 150 bands in 13 venues.
The headliners were The Flaming Lips with Superchunk and Dreamers of the Ghetto (Saturday) and Guided By Voices with Drive-By Truckers and The Dodos (Friday).
Coverage of the 2011 festival included:
USA Today, "Looking for a hip, new music fest? Try Hopscotch" "It turns out the Hopscotch Music Festival is a huge reason to head down to Raleigh, N.C., in a few weeks. [... It] sounds like a not-to-miss weekend." Spin, "8 Best Moments of Hopscotch Festival" "'How much control do we have over the disco ball?' singer-songwriter John Vanderslice asked onstage at the Berkeley Cafe on Friday night. Someone flicked a switch and the room filled with color, to the delighted oohs and aahs of the crowd." News & Observer, "Hopscotch: perfection, indeed" "It is the nature of events like the Hopscotch Music Festival to either grow to oversized proportions, or wither and die. If Hopscotch's organizers could somehow bottle it and keep the festival right at this year's size indefinitely, that would be a very fine thing because it's really been perfect so far. The clubs have been crowded, but mostly not too crowded, with a great energy at shows around town and out on the street. Hopscotch has brought together a wonderful sense of critical mass -- the feeling that there's not only a lot of people on the town to hear music, but the right people." Mountain Xpress, "Hopscotchin' in Raleigh" "The festival is like a younger cousin to SXSW or CMJ. It's loaded with afternoon label showcases and corporate parties, then the official performances at a dozen venues across town. However, where the enormity of cities like Austin or New York make it all but impossible to jump between bars without spending your entire festival en route, Hopscotch is small enough that skipping between shows actually makes sense. Plus, roaming the streets between can't-miss acts leaves lots of time to run into new friends, get sidetracked into unexpected shows or end up on a random adventure. And there was plenty of that."
The complete lineup was: All Tiny Creatures, Andrew Cedermark, Annuals, Apache Dropout, Apex Manor, Apple Juice Kid, Bandway, Barn Owl, Bass Drum of Death, Beach Fossils, Beans, Bird Peterson, Black Lips, Black Twig Pickers, Bombadil, Braids, Brain F≠, Budos Band, Bustello, Caltrop, Carlitta Durand, Cassis Orange, Charlie Smarts, Cheveu, Cheyenne Marie Mize, Chip Robinson, Cold Cave, Coliseum, D&D Sluggers, D-Town Brass, Dan Melchior Und Das Menace, David Daniell, Dawn Golden and Rosy, Cross, Des Ark, Diamond Rings, Dinosaur Feathers, Disappears, DJ Thien, Dreamers of the Ghetto, Drive-By Truckers, Duane Pitre Sextet, Dustin Wong, Dylan Gilbert, Earth, Embarrassing Fruits, Empress Hotel, Eric Carbonara & Jesse Sparhawk, Family Dynamics, Fan Modine, Fight the Big Bull, Filthybird, Flight, Ford & Lopatin, Frank Fairfield, Frontier Ruckus, Future Islands, Gauntlet Hair, Generationals, Grandchildren, Gross Ghost, Guided by Voices, Heads on Sticks, Hog, Horseback, Hospitality, Invisible Hand, J Mascis, Jack the Radio, Japandroids, JEFF The Brotherhood, Jennyanykind, John Vanderslice, Jon Lindsay, Julianna Barwick, Justin Robinson and The Mary Annettes, King Mez, KORT, Krallice, L.E.G.A.C.Y., Last Year's Men, Le Weekend, Little Scream, Liturgy, Lonnie Walker, Lost in the Trees, Lower Dens, Man Will Destroy Himself, Man/Miracle, Mandolin Orange, Mount Eerie, Mount Moriah, Mouthus, North Elementary, Old Bricks, Oneohtrix Point Never, Onward Soldiers, Organos, Oulipo, Oxbow, PC Worship, Pepper Rabbit, Peter Lamb and The Wolves, Prurient, Reading Rainbow, Rhys Chatham, Royal Bangs, Royal Baths, Shit Horse, Sir Richard Bishop, Soft Company, SPCL GST, Spider Bags, Steve Gunn, Super Vacations, Superchunk, Swans, Temperance League, Tender Fruit, The Body, The Caribbean, The Dodos, The Flaming Lips, The Foreign Exchange, The Hairs, The Light Pines, The Loners, The Love Language, The Men, The Moderate, The Necks, The Old Ceremony, The Prayers and Tears, The Strugglers/ Brice Randall Bickford, The Tomahawks, Times New Viking, Titus Andronicus, Toro Y Moi, Twelve Thousand Armies, Twin Shadow, Tyvek, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Vivian Girls, Weekend, Wembley, Wesley Wolfe, Whatever Brains, White Ring, William Tyler, Wooden Wand, Woodsman, Xiu Xiu, XRay Eyeballs, Yair Yona.
2012 The third Hopscotch Music Festival took place September 6–8, 2012. It featured 175 bands in 15 venues.
The headliners were The Roots, Escort (whose performance was canceled due to severe weather) and Shirlette & The Dynamite Brothers (Saturday) and The Jesus and Mary Chain, Built to Spill and Zammuto (Friday).