Left to right: Friday night’s headliners will be Brett Young and Thomas Rhett. On Saturday night, get ready for Hank Williams Jr. and Eric Church. (Photos courtesy of Rock the South)
CULLMAN – In one day, Rock the South (RTS) returns for its seventh annual installment. Gates will open at noon Friday and Saturday, with entertainment and activities running until midnight both days. An estimated 28,000 to 29,000 fans are expected to attend each day.
Lineup and schedule
Friday
- 2:15 – Dalton and the Sheriffs
- 3:15 – Josh Miranda
- 4:15 – Kirstie Lovelady
- 5:30 – Dylan Schneider
- 6:20 – Upchurch
- 7:40 – Lauren Alaina
- 9:15 – Brett Young
- 11 – Thomas Rhett
Saturday
- 1 – Dalton and the Sheriffs
- 2 – Kenton Bryant
- 3:45 – Troy Cartwright
- 4:45 – Travis Denning
- 5:30 – Mason Ramsey
- 6:10 – Marshall Tucker Band
- 7:45 – Riley Green
- 9:30 – Hank Williams Jr.
- 11:15 – Eric Church
Dee Jay Silver will keep things moving during down times in the live show.
Event security
Last year’s Las Vegas concert mass shooting weighed heavily on the minds of RTS event planners, and no one has forgotten the less serious problems that occurred during last year’s weather delays. Event planners and the Cullman Police Department (CPD) have taken a serious look at matters of security both inside and outside Heritage Park.
Said RTS event coordinator Nathan Baugh, "While we understand things can happen anywhere, we want to do everything we can to protect our attendees and artists. As another layer of protection, we are adding metal detectors to our entrances at Rock the South in 2018. Safety is of paramount priority to our team, and we will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to make Rock the South safe for all.”
Police Chief Kenny Culpepper worked with the RTS staff to manage security in and around the park, using CPD and Cullman County Sheriff’s Office resources. He declined to release specific details of the plan, for security reasons, but shared that it would include an increased personnel presence in sensitive areas, an expanded park perimeter and even aerial surveillance of the event site.
“We’ve always felt comfortable with our interior security,” said Culpepper. “In other words, (once) you go through the gate and you actually get into the grounds. We’ve always felt like we had a good presence, and that we were able to maintain security fairly well inside the perimeter. And that’s going to be enhanced and increased this year with the metal detectors.
“The problem now is (if) you have an event that’s out of the norm, and then you have to respond to it. So, the direction and guidance that we’re getting now is to pay more attention to the exterior, the perimeter, which is what happened in Las Vegas. You had the shooter on the outside; he wasn’t actually in the venue, he just had line of sight from a distance away,” said Culpepper.
“So, we’re putting in place some plans to, number one: try to prevent someone from doing something like that, and number two: to respond to it quickly, to limit it as much as possible if it does occur, because it’s very difficult, you know, to completely stop something like that from outside the venue. The advantage we have is that we don’t have high-rises and a lot of vantage points, but we do have a few areas of concern that we’re working some contingency plans on.”
The increased exterior security presence should not only be able to deter or respond to a crisis event like a shooter, but also to respond to issues at local businesses and other locations surrounding the park. According to Culpepper, the event venue and surrounding areas will be patrolled by around 100 law enforcement officers from multiple agencies including CPD, the Cullman County Sheriff’s Office, ALEA (Alabama State Troopers), Tuscaloosa Police, Guntersville Police, Hanceville Police and the State Fire Marshal’s Office. Personnel will be assigned to small teams to patrol inside and outside the event perimeter. Cullman County Juvenile Probation personnel will also be on hand to assist with any issues involving minors. An onsite command center will coordinate the efforts of personnel from all the above-listed agencies plus others like Cullman Fire Rescue, Cullman Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and even the National Weather Service.
Culpepper noted that RTS is an all-hands-on-deck event for the CPD, and that the large number of city officers at and around the park will not lessen the number of officers on regular patrols in other parts of the city.
A tip for visitors
Culpepper and Baugh advised all RTS visitors to realize that the event is like most other large music events today: bags and containers will be subject to search, and metal detectors will be in use. They encouraged visitors to come early, be patient and double check what they are carrying.
Before you approach the gates, make sure any weapons (including pocket knives) are secured in your vehicle. Have keys and other metal objects out of your pockets and ready to hand off to security personnel when passing through the metal detectors. And, of course, don’t try to bring anything into the park you wouldn’t want to be caught with. In light of current concern across the country, this will be the most secure RTS yet.
Said Baugh, “Ultimately, everybody’s sensitive to what happened in Las Vegas and around the country, but I think that the amazing thing, on top of just how great the city of Cullman is to us, is the partnerships we have with Chief Culpepper and (Cullman Fire Rescue Chief) Brian Bradberry, and his team and EMS. And so, they do a really good job of devising the security plan and working with our team, and so we feel really confident that we have the ability to keep people safe this weekend.”
Minimizing the impact on Heritage Park
An expanded event perimeter will not only help address security matters, but also allow the relocation of certain resources within the venue, to alter foot traffic patterns from previous years and protect areas that have tended to suffer more damage. The vendors’ area will now be located in the Lee Street parking lot, and the park’s baseball fields will be closed.
Said Baugh, “We have worked diligently with Cullman City Parks and Recreation to develop a plan that eliminates uses of certain pieces of the park, like the baseball fields, and helps give us more space for attendees to move about.”
Main Soccer field/stage area set for renovation
Event planners aren’t too worried about the large soccer field that houses the stage, as that field is set for a complete renovation after RTS. Seven months ago, Cullman Parks, Recreation, and Sports Tourism Executive Director Nathan Anderson announced the renovation after the discovery that the main field had originally been designed as two crowned fields with a low drainage area between. (See www.cullmantribune.com/articles/2017/10/22/cpr-planning-drainage-redesigns-heritage-park-fields-other-areas.)
At that time, Anderson said, “We are working with the civil engineers at St. John and Associates on a redesign of these fields. We are looking at raising the center of this field up over a foot and a half. We will have all the drainage of the field going to the perimeters of this large field; nothing will drain into the interior of the field. So during a larger festival or when we have larger crowds on these fields, they will be far more resilient if we have another rain event like we had this past year. As far as playing soccer, the design will make (the fields) easier to play on in light rain situations and in a heavy rain situation they’ll drain much quicker and get the players back on the field faster. So this is something that really revealed to us that we need to redo these fields. We are currently going through design work and engineering work to redesign these large fields.”
After RTS, the turf will be taken up, and the field will be regraded and crowned to promote better drainage. For that reason, turf conditions on that field are not as much of a concern as visitor experiences on the field. Planners don’t want the middle of the field to become a mud hole like last year, so they covered all low-lying areas with large sheets of plastic a while back, to keep those spots dry through all the rain that Cullman has recently experienced.
Said Baugh, “We’re in a little bit different situation than we were last year, in the sense that we don’t have to play soccer on it two months later, because they’re actually going to tear them up and re-engineer them and regrade them and do all that stuff. So, while that helps the long term next week, that doesn’t help the consumer experience onsite. So we worked with other people, and basically we just said, ‘Hey, let’s just cover our high impact areas.’ We knew the rain was not going to most likely be there during the show- it was going to be there the week prior to the show. So we invested in, basically, a ton of plastic to cover all your high impact areas: meaning all your lanes, all the areas that were wet last year . . . Using that approach has been huge for us. We’re going to pull it up, basically, as soon as the weather clears here, and we’ll have a dry field underneath.”
Vendors and other extras for visitors
According to Baugh, “We have tons of stuff out here, anywhere from Jack Daniels to El Jimador, to Tito’s, to Firestone. One of the biggest things we champion is stuff offstage as well, the consumer experience and the patron experience that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the stage. So we’ve taken a real big investment in that side of things, and making the vendor area more engaging, more active, and we think we’ve really done a really good job of that this year.”
Help for stranded motorists
O’Reilly Auto Parts will provide help for visitors having car trouble, including running out of gas. Anyone needing help can text their location to 256-297-1393.
Vendors
The following are the businesses and other entities that will be located in the vendors’ area along Lee Street: Budweiser, El Jimador Tequila, Jim ‘N Nick’s Bar-B-Q, Tito’s Handmade Vodka, Jack Daniels, Firefly Spirits, Fireball, Ruscelli’s, Collins Concessions, Tropical Ice, Gourmet Popcorn, Island Noodle, Southern Concessions, Johnson RV, Shiver Shaved Ice, Stephanie Concessions, Roma Taqueria, Papa John’s, Third Roast Coffee, Old Row, Mug Mania, Big Spoon Creamery, Such-N-Such, Hibachi 4 Hire, AT&T (cell phone charging station), Polish Boutique, Hang That Twang, I Low Green, Bestway, TopGolf, Ditto Fine Art, 65 South, Tupelo, Lipton Tea, This is Alabama, Dippin’ Dots, Great Clips, Will Ainsworth, Jack’s, Soco Swings, DND Hats and Amp Organic.
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