Callin’ Baton Rouge

Last spring, country music fan Jody Dexter White took to Facebook with great concerns about the availability of rentable tailgating equipment near LSU. She was prepping for the Bayou Country Superfest, and hauling her own gear 1,600 miles from Boston just didn’t seem like the practical thing to do.

“There will be no need for any of that stuff,” Louisianan Jay Couvillion told her. “Find the Touchdown Village, and there will be enough people to give you whatever you need. Just come and have a good time.”

More than 85,000 people from across the state, region and nation did just that at last year’s inaugural Superfest, and thousands more are poised for hours of boot-shaking performances when the event returns to Tiger Stadium to rebrand the LSU campus as the Church of Country this Memorial Day weekend.

But will this, just the second Superfest, be Baton Rouge’s last?

When Festival Productions founder and Jazz Fest organizer Quint Davis declared his intent last year to make the Superfest an annual concert, he did not guarantee that it will always be callin’ Baton Rouge home. He has warned that if Mayor Kip Holden and the Metro Council pull a $300,000 subsidy earmarked for the event for the past two years, the Superfest could be house-hunting for 2012.

“I just hope we can keep it here,” says WYNK deejay Scott Innes. “Anything that gets [Mayor] Kip [Holden] into boots and a cowboy hat has got to be great.”

With a gold-buckled slate of big-name artists seemingly plucked straight from the Billboard Top 10—Sugarland, The Zac Brown Band and last year’s co-headliner Kenny Chesney all charted best-selling albums within a few months of the festival announcement—Superfest promises two full days of popular music, food and events May 28 and 29.

Joining those heavyweights will be country icon Tim McGraw. Born the estranged son of major league relief pitcher Frank “Tug” McGraw, Tim grew up with his mother and stepfather in Richland Parish east of Monroe before breaking into the Nashville country scene in the early 1990s.

Twenty-one top country singles and 11 straight #1 Billboard albums, a high-profile marriage to Faith Hill and critically acclaimed performances in Friday Night Lights, The Blind Side and Country Strong have followed.

If Davis aimed for pop crossover artists with last year’s Superfest, fans may think he topped that by snagging McGraw, country’s biggest Hollywood crossover.

Others might notice a curiously large gender gap among this year’s crop. Taylor Swift, Kellie Pickler and Gloriana repped for the fairer sex last year, but this time around Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland may be the only female performer to set foot on stage all weekend.

The new line-up ought to appeal to younger crowds, though, with departed warhorses Brooks & Dunn making way for fresh faces like songwriter-turned-performer Luke Bryan, a bright star on the rise after winning CMT’s Breakthrough Video of the Year for 2010, and Georgia sextet The Zac Brown Band, a guitars-and-fiddle outfit busy keeping barroom celebrations of sandy-toed R&R alive and well for a new generation of country fans that may snicker at Jimmy Buffet behind their parents’ backs. Brown has a lot of collegiate and thirtysomething fans in Southern urban centers like Atlanta, Austin and Baton Rouge, a popularity largely bolstered by those who miss Dave Matthews Band and who would rather see polished Nashville products overtaken by outsider artists unafraid of letting modern country music get beardy again.

“Zac Brown is on fire and has really hit a niche,” Innes says. “What a way to warm up a crowd.”

Bayou Country Superfest’s Fan Fest, with tailgating, music, food and activities, will take place outside of the stadium May 28 and 29, and the first act begins at 4 p.m. each day. Trace Adkins, Lee Brice, Jason Michael Carroll, Billy Currington and Josh Thompson round out the bill.

bayoucountrysuperfest.com