The People of Suburbia Music Festival '14.
It's tough to say exactly how many people turned out for Live Nation's first-ever Suburbia Music Festival in Plano's Oak Point Park and Nature Preserve.
By the eye test, it was clear that there were many thousands of fans over by the main Meadows Stage at most any point, with more and more scattered about at the festival grounds' other, smaller Cedar Room and Prairie stages.
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• Needtobreathe, Third Eye Blind, Violent Femmes, Alabama Shakes and More From Day One of Suburbia.
• Run The Jewels, Yelawolf, Big Gigantic and More From Day One of Suburbia Fest.
• David Guetta, Twenty One Pilots, Tegan & Sara and More from Day Two of Suburbia.
• J. Cole, Reignwolf, Shakey Graves and More from Day Two of Suburbia Fest.
Now, in the wake of the festival, the City of Plano is estimating that the festival drew some 20,000 or so attendees came through the park's gates over the course of the its two days.
Sounds close enough, to be fair. Maybe a little high, but not ridiculously so.
Regardless, that figure is smaller than the Live Nation-anticipated 20,000 attendees per day guess we'd once heard from a festival source — a figure shared, granted, before the lineup was even announced. Still, organizers on-site at the festival seemed pleased enough with the turnout. Well, that or they were just coached up well enough to toe the party line and ensure anyone who asked that attendance of the festival's first run were “in line with expectations.”
That, too, seems fair. Given the rather mediocre lineup's scattershot attempt at catch-all appeal, it sure exceeded my own predictions.
And many props to those that did come out and take a chance on this upstart affair. In future years, one presumes, Suburbia's music will take on a less nebulous shape, and these crowds will have in their back pockets the fact that they attended it way back when. Better yet, they were, as a whole, in remarkable spirits all weekend long, more than happy to take part in the experiment that was this attempt at providing the suburbs a legitimate music festival experience.
The below photos, certainly, capture those cheery dispositions. Check 'em out. And if they're not enough for ya? Well, you can see many, many more in our Facebook album from the event right here.
All photos by Kathy Tran.