Does possible return of Columbia’s 3 Rivers Music Fest justify city setting aside $600K?

Columbia has set aside $600,000 for the return of one of its biggest events, but some feel the pitch doesn’t justify the potential investment.

From 2000-06, the 3 Rivers Music Festival loomed large over Columbia, spanning three days and crowning its lineups with some impressive headliners: Aretha Franklin, Outkast, Ray Charles, Widespread Panic, George Clinton, Nickel Creek and more. The event’s high-profile run drew thousands to the area.

Celebrity hairstylist Roger “Roy” Brasley, who was awarded the key to the city by former Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin, late last month pitched the city council on his hopes to bring back 3 Rivers, with council members subsequently putting aside $500,000 from the city’s hospitality tax coffers and $100,000 from a liquor permit rebate fund to potentially help pay for the revived event.

“That festival was something that was so amazing for the city,” Brasley said, reminiscing about the positive vibe that having performers like Aretha Franklin playing outside in the city brought to the local community as well as the financial impact felt by 3 Rivers’ crowds.

“We went through a lot, but the festival did what it was supposed to do,” he added. “As far as strengthening the economy, the local businesses were selling out of food. The alcohol was running out of the bars. The hotels were booked. So it did a lot for hospitality and tourism in the city.”

Earlier this year, Brasley went before the city’s Hospitality Tax Advisory Committee, a group of citizen volunteers that makes recommendations to the city council for how to spend funds raised by the food and beverage tax, intended for efforts to boost tourism in the city. He was denied.

Brasley’s 3 Rivers push was subsequently added to the council’s agenda to consider as a special revenue allocation. His pitch didn’t include much in the way of details. He has yet to announce a prospective date, telling council members he was eyeing next fall but could do next spring. He’s still scouting for a location.

Brasley said he had reached out to Aerosmith and the Dixie Chicks (who these days go by The Chicks), saying that neither act came back with an offer less than $1.5 million to play the event.

Council members made suggestions, but none seemed critical of his ideas, with the $600,000 being set aside for final approval when Brasley comes back with a more fully fleshed-out plan for the event.

While Brasley doesn’t have any experience planning an event at this level, he said he’s confident he can pull it off. He pointed to the team he has behind him and the experience they have putting on the smaller Nova Fest on Main Street, which he said drew 5,000 people in June. He said he has talked with Fred Monk, one of the festival’s original founders, about his plans.

Brasley added that his experience as a celebrity hairstylist affords him relationships with top talent he hopes to leverage to get artists to play 3 Rivers, and to do it for less than their normal rates. He said he intended to spend time while he worked this month’s Essence Festival doing just that.

“Every year that I go (to Essence) I’m always backstage, behind the scenes, seeing, learning and participating and helping with logistics and the run of show,” Brasley said. “The whole technical part of it, I know like the back of my hand, so it won’t be any issues with (3 Rivers).”

He said sponsorships would be key to building on the money he stands to receive from the city, reporting that his team has already been talking with some “major, major companies.” Brasley added he’s fine with only doing one or two days instead of the three days 3 Rivers used to run in order to get the event back up and running again.

‘An absolute game-changer’

Some local event planners who regularly deal with the city’s hospitality tax apparatus were perplexed that such a large sum was set aside after Brasley’s pitch.

Phill Blair is on the board of the Jam Room Music Festival, which attracts crowds to Main Street each year with a free event that leans on legacy indie rock acts, and has put on various other events in the city. He said it was frustrating to see $600,000 set aside for a proposal that didn’t include many specifics when other groups have to prepare detailed plans in hopes of receiving a fraction of what 3 Rivers has set aside.

“That amount of money is an absolute game-changer,” Blair said. “If anybody thought that amount of money was even possible, surely they would plan something different than they’re planning.”

During the 2023 fiscal year, the city brought in more than $14 million through its 2% hospitality tax on purchases at bars and restaurants, budgeting for nearly $15 million in its 2024 finances and nearly $16 million for the 2025 fiscal year. Nearly $7 million from the fund was allocated to community promotions for 2025.

Among this year’s recipients, no other single event got close to the $500,000 in hospitality tax money set aside for 3 Rivers. The Columbia International Festival, which claims an annual attendance of 17,000-22,000, got the most of any single event among the allocations recommended by the hospitality tax committee, receiving $150,000. The Jam Room Music Festival, in action since 2012, received $100,000.

Apart from line item allocations the city council grants to local institutions like the Columbia Museum of Art (which got $1 million this year), the only group that received more hospitality tax funding than 3 Rivers stands to get was the Five Points Association, which puts on the annual St. Pat’s in Five Points festival (claiming an annual attendance of about 45,000) in addition to other events, marketing efforts and beautification work in the neighborhood. The group received $525,000.

Lee Snelgrove is the arts and culture manager at the Richland Library and previously served as leader of the city-backed arts booster One Columbia. He said $600,000 seems like both too little to pull off the kind of event Brasley wants to achieve and a surprisingly big amount for the city to put toward any one event.

“For the city to set aside $600,000 for a festival that isn’t necessarily immediately in planning, as far as I understand, and doesn’t have a date set and doesn’t have even some structure to the organization that will expend those funds, I was very surprised to see how quickly council was willing to do that,” Snelgrove said.

“And certainly having been a part of a lot of other events and organizations that are constantly sort of having to defend themselves to council and their existence, it was a lot more money than I would have thought that they were interested in allocating to any one thing,” he added.

What happened to festival?

The first time around, the 3 Rivers Music Festival was scuttled when its attendance failed to keep up with its finances.

The State previously reported that the event’s run ended after the 2006 festival saw ticket sales hit an all-time low, falling $200,000 short of projections and forcing the city to make up the difference. That increased the city’s investment in the 2006 festival to about $500,000 — equivalent to about $800,000 in 2024 dollars.

During that initial seven-year run, attendance ranged from a high of about 85,000 in 2001 to the low of about 35,000 in 2006.

A previous effort by other organizers to revive 3 Rivers in 2013 only succeeded in producing one modest gospel concert before every subsequent event scheduled under the brand in 2013 and 2014 was canceled. That effort burned through nearly $125,000 in combined allocations from Columbia and Richland County.

But Brasley doesn’t seem concerned about any negative associations with the name.

“All the festivals in the world can come to Columbia or to South Carolina, and they can be here and they can do whatever it is they like to do. But 3 Rivers is set aside,” he said. “It had its own lane then. And it still has its own lane now.”