Just two weeks before the event, organizers of the SweetWater 420 Fest announced Friday that headliners Beck and Sightly Stoopid have been dropped and those who purchased tickets will get a refund.
Instead, a “more intimate festival” that takes a “trip back to our roots” will be held at Pullman Yards on April 20-21, according to a social media post. Tickets will now be free with a $10 donation to the nonprofit Waterkeeper Alliance.
The music line-up now consists of headliners Gov’t Mule and Big Gigantic along with acts such as Grace Potter and Trombone Shorty. See the revised line-up here.
Festival organizers did not announce a reason behind the abrupt change of direction for the event, but the Atlanta-Journal Constitution reports that lagging ticket sales were one of the reasons behind the downsizing of the festival at its new home at Pullman Yards.
Last year, SweetWater 420 Fest moved to the brewery’s headquarters in the Armour-Ottley district. An estimated 5,000 people attended the event, which was a far cry from the 30,000+ who had attended when the event was held in Centennial Park in previous years.
Although SweetWater never implicitly said it was leaving Centennial Park due to its inability to restrict guns on public property, local officials did and called the festival’s departure an economic loss for Downtown Atlanta.
Since Pullman Yards is private property, it has much more leeway to restrict guns and weapons at the event.