MACON — Mercer’s popular BearStock Music and Arts Festival moves off campus for the first time this year, locating in Tattnall Square Park for its fourth annual installment. The event begins at noon on Saturday. The concert is free, open to the public and will feature 15 bands on two stages. In addition, this year’s event is being held in conjunction with the Southeastern Collegiate Cycling Conference Championships, hosted by Mercer Cycling. The championships are a series of races on Saturday and Sunday, and include a criterium race around Tattnall Park during the afternoon of the festival.
“We are hoping that, with the move to Tattnall, we can get more of the Macon community involved. We want the Macon community to feel just as welcome as Mercer students, faculty and staff,” said Rachel Brooks, Mercer Live co-chair for Quadworks, the University’s student activities board. “We also have more room to add things like food vendors and smaller events like Andy Warhol Pop Art. So it should be a great event for all.”
The festival is headlined by electronic-rap duo 3Oh!3 and rapper Roscoe Dash. 3Oh!3 has had two singles reach No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100, “Don’t Trust Me,” from their 2008 album Want, and “My First Kiss,” from their most recent album Streets of Gold. Roscoe Dash is an Atlanta-based artist whose most recent single, “All the Way Turnt Up” (featuring Soulja Boy), was recently at No. 46 on the top 100.
The local bands and artists scheduled to perform at BearStock include:
12 p.m. The Silver Comet
12:40 p.m. A Ransom Plea
1:20 p.m. Venice Is Sinking
2 p.m. Stribling
2:40 p.m. Broken Bootstraps
3:20 p.m. Chelsea Hughes
4 p.m. The Less
4:40 p.m. Bottle Up and Explode
5:20 p.m. Ocean Is Theory
6 p.m. JuBee and the Morning After
6:40 p.m. theKey
7:25 p.m. Parachute Musical, presented by TheBlueIndian.com
8:40 p.m. DJ Pharmer, presented by DSEL Promotions
9 p.m. Roscoe Dash
9:45 p.m. 3OH!3
The festival is family friendly until 7 p.m. After 7, the show will become PG-13, according to organizers. There will be food and drinks available for purchase. The streets surrounding the park will be closed beginning at 7 a.m. Saturday through 6 p.m. for the criterium. There will be designated crossing areas around the park, and festival-goers are required to use these areas to cross the street. Parking will be available on the Mercer campus, accessible from the Mercer University Drive entrances of campus.
Bike Race
Organizers are excited to be combining the festival and the bike race to encourage a campus community connection, said Andrew Lockwood, a Mercer engineering graduate student and race director for Mercer Cycling.
“Tattnall Square Park was a great venue last May for the inaugural Macon Cycling Classic and we wanted to capitalize on the momentum built from the race,” Lockwood said. “Overall, we were looking for a venue that combined both the Macon area community as well as Mercerians, and I believe we found it at Tattnall Square Park. The park venue gets students off campus, but is still within easy walking distance.
“Bringing the SECCC Championship to Macon was a huge accomplishment for our team, but it also reflects on the strength of our cycling community and the Macon area as a whole in having the ability to host a top tier event,” Lockwood added. “Combining our race with BearStock only made sense, because we both have common goals of putting on a great show for Mercer and Macon this weekend.”
Saturday morning’s championship events will consist of an individual time trials and team time trials beginning at 8 a.m. on a 16.8 mile course east of Macon, in Gordon. The race will begin and end at the intersection of Antioch Church Road and Hammock Road. The criterium will be featured on an extremely fast 0.7 mile course around Tattnall Square Park. The event’s final race begins at 9 a.m. Sunday on a 16-mile loop adjacent to the time trial areas, and also begins at the intersection of Antioch and Hammock roads.
About Mercer University
Founded in 1833, Mercer University is a dynamic and comprehensive center of undergraduate, graduate and professional education. The University enrolls more than 8,200 students in 11 schools and colleges – liberal arts, law, pharmacy, medicine, business, engineering, education, theology, music, nursing and continuing and professional studies – on major campuses in Macon, Atlanta and Savannah and at four regional academic centers across the state. Mercer is affiliated with two teaching hospitals — Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah and the Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon, and has educational partnerships with Warner Robins Air Logistics Center in Warner Robins and Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta. The University operates an academic press and a performing arts center in Macon and an engineering research center in Warner Robins. Mercer is the only private university in Georgia to field an NCAA Division I athletic program. For more information, visit www.mercer.edu.
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