Jambalaya Festival Moves Downtown

Good news for rap dudes who don’t leaving their hood for shows: next Friday’s Jambalaya Festival scheduled for the Backyard has been moved downtown to the Austin Music Hall.

The day-long festival, which includes big-name rappers Big Boi, RL Grime, and G-Eazy in addition to Canadian electronic duo Zeds Dead and headliners Earl Wolf – Odd Future kingpins Tyler, the Creator and Earl Sweatshirt – takes the place of previous event Spring Love 2013, a “super duper UV ‘glow’ themed large scaled electrifying based infused party” that’s been moved across town to the Mexitas Event Center according to Do512.

Once that went down, Jambalaya show promoter Sascha Stone Guttfreund told the Chronicle that the decision to switch the hip-hop festival downtown was easy.

“The idea was always to replicate the same experience in each market (Austin, Dallas, Houston) and thus stay indoors and downtown,” he said in an email. “AMH was originally booked, but when an event slated for May 24 canceled, we moved down. We love the Backyard and plan on doing something there soon, but this made the most sense for this particular event.”

Guttfreund’s makes no mention of the fact that the Backyard can fit 7,500 people while Austin Music Hall tops out around 3,000, but that may be beside the point. Show me one local hip-hop fan who would rather drive out to Bee Caves to see Big Boi and a few members of Odd Future play a giant amphitheater with sketchy parking than the same show downtown, and I’ll show you someone who’s fronting.