Road to Nightfall prelims kick off this weekend
Ever since he masterminded the Road to Nightfall’s creation in 2010, Jonathan Susman says the annual battle of the bands and its pool of competitors have continually surprised him.
As the event prepares to enter its seventh season with a series of preliminary rounds beginning this weekend, Susman says it’s provided invaluable inspiration and insight into the diversity and skill of Chattanooga’s music scene.
“It’s made every bit of difference as far as helping me,” he says.
After returning to Chattanooga after several years living in Nashville, Susman conceived of the Road to Nightfall while working as the media coordinator for Chattanooga Presents, the event’s parent company. The battle’s structure — early rounds decided by popular vote and a juried final round — is based on a Music City competition, the Road to Bonnaroo, which guaranteed the winning band a spot at the summer music festival.
In addition to cash prizes and free recording time, the Road to Nightfall winner will headline an evening of the Nightfall concert series, which runs Fridays from May 8 to Aug. 26.
The preliminary rounds, which begin Friday, March 11, have been moved from their longtime home at Rhythm & Brews, which closed last fall, to the Granfalloon on Main Street. The final round, slated for March 26, also has been relocated from The Camp House to Revelry Room on the Chattanooga Choo Choo campus.
Other than the new venues, the improvements and expansions that were made to the event last year, including a fifth preliminary round, vote- bytext system and buttressed prize package, will carry over this year, Susman says.
“Really, as far as that stuff is concerned, it’s all staying the same,” he says. “There were 20,000 total votes last year for bands. It was wildly successful in getting the bands’ names out there.”
Susman now oversees Road to Nightfall on Chattanooga Presents’ behalf through his new company, Gig City Productions. He has long downplayed the competitive aspects of the event, preferring to tout its tendency to help bands forge new partnerships and build a wider, more diverse fan base.
Early on, he was unsure sure how well the event would translate from a music mecca like Nashville to Chattanooga’s smaller pool of artists, but he says he quickly discovered it suited the Scenic City to a T.
“After that first year, I realized more and more the talent that we have here,” Susman says. “That’s what led me to do three years of work to create the Music Resource Center, which is Sound Corps, to do the economic impact study we did of music — to really bring music to the forefront of conversation. It showed me the talent we have here and gave me the ability to have those conversations.”