Levitt AMP Moss Point: Seven Saturdays of Free Music

Some towns wait all year for one Saturday worth circling on the calendar. This fall, Moss Point gets seven of them.

The Levitt AMP Moss Point Music Series opens Saturday, August 22 at Riverfront Park and does not let up until October 31. Seven free concerts on the Escatawpa. A brand new steel guitar standing 17 feet tall at the end of Main Street. And on one Saturday in September, a hometown American Idol finalist walking back onto a stage in the city that raised him. Every show is free and open to all ages, and all of it happens right here in the River City.

Opening night, the River City gets its guitar

Opening night runs from 5 to 9 p.m., and at 5:30 the city cuts the ribbon on “River City Guitar,” a sculpture rising 17 feet over Riverfront Park.

Look closely and you will find the story of this town welded into one shape. The guitar carries our music. The longleaf pine form carries the timber years that built this city. The saw blade sits where the sound hole should be, doubling as a sun coming up over the water. The sculpture was funded through the same grant that brought the concerts, so long after the last note of this season fades, it will still be standing at the end of Main Street, telling everyone who passes that music lives here.

“The sculpture will help activate one of the Coast’s most stunning downtown vistas,” said Julian Rankin, strategic advisor for the Walter Anderson Museum of Art.

Parker Barrow holds the stage all evening with a Southern rock and soul sound built for a warm night on the river. Come for the ribbon, stay for the whole show.

The full Levitt AMP Moss Point lineup

Seven artists play across ten weeks. Unless noted, every concert runs from 5 to 9 p.m. at Riverfront Park.

• Saturday, August 22: Parker Barrow, opening night
• Saturday, August 29: A.J. Haynes, a Nature Notes evening
• Saturday, September 12: Nik Parr and The Selfless Lovers, River Jam
• Saturday, September 19: Daniel Stallworth, Moss Point’s own American Idol Top 7 finalist, a Homecoming lawn party from 1 to 5 p.m.
• Saturday, October 3: OKAN, Latin Soundwave
• Saturday, October 10: Tank and The Bangas, playing the same weekend as Smokin’ the Sip downtown
• Saturday, October 31: Luther Dickinson and Friends, closing the season

Every date is posted on the City of Moss Point community calendar as it approaches.

September 19 is a homecoming in every sense of the word

Circle that date now. The Saturday of Moss Point High School Homecoming weekend belongs to Daniel Stallworth, and if you were anywhere near a television this spring, you already know why.

Daniel is ours. He graduated from Moss Point High School in 2016, and he grew up in the youth choir and behind the drums at Greater Antioch Missionary Baptist Church. This spring, that same kid stood in front of millions on American Idol and sang his way from the auditions all the way to a Top 7 finish, surviving elimination week after week because the country kept voting for him. On Disney Night, Carrie Underwood told him his performance “felt like it was made for you and your voice.” An elementary school music teacher from Moss Point, standing on the biggest singing stage in America, sounding like he was born for it. He was.

Now he comes home. A lawn party on the Escatawpa from 1 to 5 p.m., on Homecoming weekend, in the middle of the city that raised him. The scheduling is no accident. This is Moss Point throwing its arms around one of its own, and there will not be a prouder afternoon on the Coast all year.

How Moss Point got a three year concert series

Credit belongs to the Walter Anderson Museum of Art, and specifically to Julian Rankin, who did the work on the grant that brought the Levitt AMP program to Moss Point, then carried the long, unglamorous job of assembling the partners, the funding, and the artist lineup before a single stage was built.

The award came through the Mississippi Public Art in Community Grant. According to the Mississippi Arts Commission announcement, each recipient receives $40,000 per year for three years, a total of $120,000, funded jointly by the Mississippi Arts Commission, the Maddox Foundation, and the Levitt Foundation. The grant pairs free public concerts with a permanent public sculpture, which is why River City Guitar and the music series arrived together.

The full season is presented by the Maddox Foundation, a private Mississippi foundation based in Hernando that has funded education, arts, and community projects across the state since 1968. The series is part of the national Levitt AMP program of the Levitt Family Foundation, which supports free concerts in towns and cities nationwide.

The City of Moss Point and Moss Point Main Street are the partners on the ground, handling the park, the setup, the vendors, the volunteers, and the hundred small arrangements that turn an empty lawn into a venue seven times over. Anyone who has ever run an outdoor event knows how much of that work never shows.

Music was always here

None of this is new to Main Street. Moss Point was a stop on the chitlin circuit, our own musicians toured with Bessie Smith and Otis Redding, and a Mississippi Blues Trail marker stands a short walk from the new stage. The whole story is told in the city’s Narrated History Tour, and it is worth the listen. These seven Saturdays are simply the next verse of a song this city has been singing for more than a century.

Plan your Saturdays

Riverfront Park is at 5200 Main Street in downtown Moss Point, at the end of Main where the road meets the Escatawpa. Bring a lawn chair or a blanket. Come early if you want a spot near the front, and walk the district while you are down there, because the surrounding businesses stay open on concert nights.

Vendors and volunteers can sign up for any concert through Go Coast Events, and the full series details live on the Moss Point Main Street series page. Businesses interested in what a busier downtown means for them can read more on the Investment In Moss Point page.

Seven Saturdays on the river, and nothing to pay at the gate. We will see you at the park on August 22.