S.A. still lacks a major music festival but that could...

SAN ANTONIO — Austin has South By Southwest and the Austin City Limits Music Festival. New Orleans has its legendary Jazz & Heritage Festival. The Newport Jazz Festival has achieved mythical status in its 60-year run.

San Antonio, larger than any of these cities, still does not have its own signature music festival.

But experts, including businessman Bruce Barshop and concert promoters Jack Orbin and Blayne Tucker, say S.A. has a downtown infrastructure increasingly suited for a major-scale festival.

Unlike the hodgepodge of nightclubs and bars used at SXSW in downtown Austin, San Antonio's downtown theaters are optimally designed for music, comedy, the arts and theater productions and concerts, as well as for TV projects.

“With all these great venues in such close proximity to one another, there should be a way to use them in unison to showcase our city,” said Frank Ruttenberg, chairman of Las Casas Foundation, which oversaw renovation of the Majestic and the Empire.

With the reopening of the Aztec Theatre as a 1,700-capacity concert venue, the unveiling of the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts in September and the expected opening of the restored and much-expanded Alameda Theatre at the end of 2015, San Antonio offers a downtown footprint for a music-anchored festival like no other city.

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With the opening of the Tobin Center and the refurbished Aztec and Alameda theaters, a visionary leader could turn downtown into one heck of music party.

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The map includes the Majestic Theatre, Charline McCombs Empire Theatre, Travis Park (the home of Jazz'SAlive), Alamo Plaza, Market Square, La Villita, Arneson River Theatre, Majik Theatre, Lila Cockrell Theatre, HemisFair Park, the Alamodome, Sunset Station and Scottish Rite Theatre & Grand Ballroom.

The venues are within walking distance of each other and close to the River Walk — a major plus for luring tourists. And not far from such an epicenter are the Guadalupe Theater, Sunken Garden Theater and the Pearl Amphitheater.

It's tantalizing to imagine a festival using many of those places.

Successful festivals are not foreign to the city and include the new indie-leaning Maverick Music Festival, Luminaria, Jazz'SAlive and the Tejano Conjunto Festival at Rosedale Park.

The conjunto festival has been around 33 years; Jazz'SAlive celebrates its 31st anniversary this fall.

But there have been flops and underachievers.

Festival People en Español, which ends its three-year run on Labor Day weekend, has failed to draw large numbers or connect daytime audiences at the Convention Center to its nighttime concerts at the Alamodome.

“They put it on Labor Day Weekend, which is the worst weekend in the world. They put it in the Convention Center which is isolated and not the best venue in the world,” Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said. “Just about everything they did, they did wrong.”

Ruttenberg and Wolff like the possibility of building on an existing event like Maverick Music Festival, Jazz'SAlive or Luminaria.

“You don't need a George Strait,” Wolff said. “You could focus on the up-and-coming bands.”

But planning would have to include allowances for several years.

“You have to look into the future,” Orbin said. “You wouldn't want to do it for just one year.”

The challenges

There have been successful festivals that used multiple locales in the city.

The San Antonio Festival, a fine arts and music event which began in 1983 with a multimillion-dollar budget and ran several years using multiple venues. It brought in the Berlin Opera, “Madame Butterfly,” Ray Charles, Paula Abdul and Frank Sinatra.

In April 2008, the NCAA Final Four successfully connected events at the Alamodome and the Convention Center with a concert stage downtown on Nueva Street that presented several acts, including the up-and-coming Taylor Swift.

The best multiyear example was the ambitious Latino Laugh Festival.

In the mid-1990s, Bruce and Colleen Barshop, with the help of producer Jeff Valdez and Showtime, created a comedy festival that used the Rivercenter Comedy Club, the Arneson River Theatre, the Majik, the Empire, the Majestic theaters, river barges and the now-defunct Planet Hollywood.

It brought entertainment industry heavy-hitters to town. Festival breakout stars included George Lopez, Carlos Alazraqui, Carlos Mencia, Pablo Francisco and Gabriel Iglesias, all of whom arrived in San Antonio virtually unknown and went on to successful comedy careers thanks to the exposure they got at the festival.

The festival's success suggests another great festival could happen gain, but launching a large-scale music-anchored festival would require leadership and vision, insiders said.

Orbin, Wolff, Tucker and musician Henry Brun (chairman of the city's Department for Culture & Creative Development and a member of the Convention and Visitors Commission) expressed interest in taking on such a role.

Beyond finding the right leader, big challenges remain, such as finding enough money, coordinating and booking the venues and agreeing on a date.

Orbin said a music festival could be launched for about $1 million; others put the cost figure much higher.

“What makes it run is money,” Barshop said, adding that staging a major festival downtown also demands passionate commitment, media players, sponsors “and the city stepping up.”

Wolff explained that city and county entities could provide a variety of things, from seed money, discounts on venue rentals, comping police security costs or simply approving the necessary street closures.

“It almost needs a TV deal or a large sponsorship, some kind of media aspect to it,” Barshop said. “But it is doable.”

For Barshop's comedy festival, which ran successfully here for a few years before moving to L.A. and then flopping, the catalyst was the deal with Showtime, which guaranteed some big names and financing.

But star power isn't enough, Barshop explained. The buzz comes from young people and new acts.

“You need the big names to be the tent poles, but to be a real festival you need a lot of the up-and-coming kind of people,” Barshop explained. “In a way, that's where a lot of the excitement ends up coming from.”

Keith Howerton, a partner in PHH Entertainment Ventures that operates the Aztec and co-owner of Sam's Burger Joint, said scheduling around SXSW in March, Fiesta in April, two weekends of the Austin City Limits Music Festival in October and Luminaria, which is expected to move to the fall, “is problematic.”

Also, major concert promoters like C3 Presents, which stages ACL, may be skeptical about getting involved, Tucker said.

“There's not a lot of empirical data that suggests everybody's going to come all at once. Most of the bigger successful festivals have kind of gradually grown organically,” he said.

That's because San Antonio is known as a “walk-up town,” meaning audiences often buy last-minute concert tickets on the day of a show.

“Talk to William Morris or CAA, and San Antonio is the slowest ticket sales market in the country, by far. Atlanta is a close second. People don't buy advance tickets here. It makes a lot of promoters nervous, especially with” festivals, added Tucker, whose Maverick Music Festival last month attracted 4,000 paying customers over its two days its sophomore year.

Howerton agreed and said he sees Tucker's festival at La Villita as “a micro test” for a bigger concept. But he was concerned “with the lack of a Zilker Park type venue downtown” for a main stage and wondered, “How do we make it different” from SXSW?

“It would be a thankless job for the first five years. It would be like herding cats. But a vision for the future of the city in terms of arts and entertainment would be great business for everybody.”

There's another reality, Barshop said: “You absolutely have to have the passion because it's so much work and a lot of the work is thankless. If (organizers) don't have the passion for it, it's not going to happen.”

Years to plan

Even if someone decided now to launch a festival, it would take two years of planning before bands (or artists, filmmakers and comedians) could hit the stage, Barshop said.

Brun, who helps plan Luminaria, Jazz'SAlive and Celebrate San Antonio, agreed.

“You've got to have a long vision. I would love to help develop a project ... to take existing facilities and build them into Jazz'SAlive or Luminaria,” Brun said. “To me, it's Luminaria.”

Wolff suggested he and Mayor Julián Castro “could get involved.” “We've talked in general about music and how important it is,” Wolff said. “I think the Maverick Music Festival broke the ice.”

Howerton was leaning toward a music industry-based festival in the fall with seven to 10 indoor stages, plus an outdoor downtown main stage “that you can put a Dave Matthews on.”

Tucker, who staged the two-day Maverick Music Festival at La Villita's Maverick Plaza, Juarez Plaza and the Arneson, said his “organic” festival could expand.

“It could totally work,” Tucker said. hsaldana@express-news.net