WILMINGTON, N.C., January 20, 2016– The North Carolina Azalea Festival is excited to announce that Belk, Inc. is sponsoring the Festival’s 2016 Belk Main Stage and renewing its partnership as the 2016 Presenting Sponsor.
“Our partnership with Belk in 2015 greatly enhanced the Festival guest experience,” said Robby Collins, president of the North Carolina Azalea Festival. “Belk shared with us its Southern Musician Showcase winners, which provided entertainment at the Festival Parade, the Airlie Luncheon Garden Party, the Belk Street Fair Stage, and the After Garden Get Down at Bluewater. Additionally, the partnership brought us in-store and on-site promotions for our community, as well as an incredible Belk Lounge at our Street Fair. We cannot wait to see what new Festival enhancements this expanded partnership with Belk will bring to Festival attendees at the Belk Main Stage and throughout the Festival.”
“Belk is honored to be back at the Azalea Festival as the title sponsor of one of the South’s most beloved celebrations and to have our Southern musicians on the Belk Main Stage,” said Jon Pollack, Belk executive vice president of marketing, sales promotion and eCommerce. “We know the important role community festivals play in the south, and the Azalea Festival is a respected tradition in North Carolina.”
The Belk Main Stage will be the site for headlining entertainment musical artists for the 2016 North Carolina Azalea Festival Presented by Belk. Past entertainers have included Alan Jackson, Nelly, Widespread Panic, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Randy Houser. This year’s lineup includes North Carolina’s own The Avett Brothers, scheduled to play Thursday, April 7th.
The North Carolina Azalea Festival is pleased to announce the second concert act on the Belk Main Stage will be Chase Rice with opening act Kane Brown, playing Saturday, April 9, 2016. “The Azalea Festival is excited to have Chase Rice join our lineup on the 2016 Belk Main Stage. National recording artist Chase Rice has his roots firmly established in North Carolina. Chase played football at UNC Chapel Hill before working on the pit crew for a North Carolina based NASCAR team. He even gives a shout out to Wrightsville Beach in his 2015 hit song ‘Carolina Can’,” said Robby Collins, president of the North Carolina Azalea Festival.
TICKETING INFORMATION
Tickets to the Chase Rice show with opener Kane Brown at the Belk Main Stage on Saturday, April 9, 2016 are $36.50. Showtime is 7:00 pm with doors opening at 5:00 pm. This is a rain or shine event. No ticket refunds will be granted.
Tickets to the show will go on sale online only Saturday, January 23 at 9:00 am. Tickets may be purchased through the North Carolina Azalea Festival website at www.ncazaleafestival.org. Tickets will go on sale in the North Carolina Azalea Festival Ticket Office on Monday, January 25 at 9:00 am. The Festival Ticket Office is open Monday – Friday, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm and located at 5725 Oleander Drive, Suite B-7, Wilmington, 28403.
VENUE INFORMATION
The Belk Main Stage is an outdoor venue located at 411 North Front Street, Wilmington, 28401. The venue is general admission standing room only. This is a non-smoking venue. Chairs, backpacks, umbrellas, any and all weapons/knives, coolers, and alcohol will not be permitted to be brought inside the venue. All handbags will be inspected. Food and beverages will be available inside the venue for cash purchase.
ARTIST BIO
When he takes the stage to perform, Chase Rice pulls no punches. “You’re gonna be mine and I’m gonna be yours for an hour and a half. We’re gonna be in each other’s face. If you don’t like that, walk out the door.” It’s his M.O: take it or leave it. Yes, the budding country star means business when he performs. And the crowds that dutifully yell every damn word back his way? They don’t seem to mind one bit. “I’m looking for people who are looking to have the best night of their entire life,” Rice says of his raucous, get-down-or-get-out live ragers. “If you aren’t here to party, I’m gonna make you party!”
Truthful, unfiltered, unafraid to take every risk he encounters, Chase Rice is that rare artist who means what he says and backs it up with equal measure. “I’m going to speak the truth any way I can,” says the singer-songwriter, who, without a song on mainstream radio, saw his 2013 Ready Set Roll EP top the iTunes Country charts and when its titular single hit the radio waves, he watched it climb up the Billboard charts and hit Gold before it even entered the Top 20, ultimately peaking in the Top 5 and scoring Platinum sales.
Don’t tell this man it’s good enough, however. “Whatever it is. I’ve always been of the mindset of ‘Let’s move on to the next one,’” says the 29-year-old, hell-bent and firm in his resolve. “I’ve always been the guy to say ‘I promise you that’s not going to be my biggest accomplishment in music.’”
As if on cue, Rice, who co-wrote the Hot 100-busting Florida Georgia Line single “Cruise,” is rearing back for more with his new full-length, major-label LP Ignite The Night, which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard Country Albums and No. 3 on the all-genre chart. It’s a genre-busting bruiser of an album that tackles tube tops and tears in equal measure, out via Columbia Nashville and his own Dack Janiels label. Rice laughs. “I wanted to push this album to a whole other level,” he says, and with wickedly racy songs like “Ride” buttressed up against sentimental, reflective charmers like “Carolina Can,” Rice is backing up his claim.
It’s a sonic free-for-all, Ignite The Night: see the electronic-drenched “Ready Set Roll;” or the big-buck arena-rock bombast “50 Shades of Crazy;” even the swampy-bluesmeets-hip-hop banger “Do It Like This” or the softer, mid-tempo ballad (and current single), “Gonna Wanna Tonight.”
“The sales and crowd singing back to me show that I am doing something right,” Rice offers. “And I can just keep giving the cold-shoulder to popular opinion.”
“Honestly, from day one I wasn’t going to let anybody tell me this wasn’t gonna work,” Rice says continuing, recounting several years spent pounding the pavement, slowly elevating his shows from small-club gigs on the back of his 2012 album, Dirt Road Communion, to opening slots on an arena tour with Dierks Bentley. “I don’t care if people call me ‘bro-country’ or they call me hip-hop or rock. All I care about is if I walk onstage and people are screaming every word back to me.”
Along the way, as he says, Rice transformed himself from “underground” to “that star, or whatever you want to call it.” Clearly, fame, and all its superfluous trappings, as far as Rice is concerned, means little to him. It’s all about hitting the stage, delivering the goods and heading on his way. “I’ll never consider myself famous, but that’s what people are saying, so whatever,” he says, chuckling. “We’ve gone from that underground artist to ‘Oh, that’s Chase Rice, that guy who’s on the radio.’ And once you get on the radio you better hold on tight!”
Rice’s live show is an adrenaline shot of energy, conservative standards be damned. Hetakes cues, in this regard, from his idols like Garth Brooks and Kenny Chesney and, before them, the Highway Outlaws: Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash. “They didn’t call themselves that,” he says of the Outlaws. “They were that because they basically gave the finger to everyone telling them how to do it. Garth, the same thing: he wanted his live show to be like Kiss.”
Quite simply, don’t expect this Florida-born, North Carolina-raised, football-playing, music-loving firestarter to go all Hollywood “I’m going to try to cling as tight as I can to the other side of it – the non-fame, the underground,” he explains. “Because as soon as you start thinking of yourself as famous or a big deal, there’s probably a mountain you’re about to fall down real quick. No matter how big fame gets, I’ve got friends to kick my ass if I start getting out of line.”
Rice, who following a football scholarship at University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill, and a stint working on a NASCAR pit crew, decamped to Nashville and began writing with the members of Florida Georgia Line, always had a knack when growing up for recognizing what makes a quality song. But it was journaling in high school, a practice he’s maintained even as his touring life got crazy and hectic, that helped him evolve into an artist with whom Nashville’s most elite song crafters are eager to break bread. “I’ve got literally eight stacks of my life in these books,” he says of his ever-mounting journals. “And it’s just my life. I’ve tried to do it every day. That started the process of my mind working. It’s allowed me to let my mind go. I can let the good out, let the bad out, write it down.”
The success of “Cruise” didn’t hurt his reputation as a stellar songwriter. And while he’s quick to acknowledge an immense pride for being a part of the hit single – “Hell yeah, I’m pumped about ‘Cruise!’ It’s one of the coolest things that’s ever happened to me” – with Ignite The Night in his back pocket, Rice is confident we haven’t seen anything yet. “I’ve always been of the mindset – it’s from football – if you win a game against Miami, you’ve got to go play Virginia Tech next week. Let’s write something better. Let’s write something more meaningful.”
And so Rice continues to hit the studio, take the stage each night, view each day as an opportunity to make his mark. “I’m happy with how it’s going,” he says modestly of a career about to blow. “I’m very happy with doing my club shows right now. I mean, George Strait didn’t get to number one in a year.”
“Head down, eyes up,” says Rice of what lies ahead. “Keep on going.”
For more information on the upcoming 69th Annual North Carolina Azalea Festival, visit www.ncazaleafestival.org or contact Executive Director Alison Baringer at alison@ncazaleafestival.org or (910) 216-9400.
About the North Carolina Azalea Festival
Since its inception in 1948, the North Carolina Azalea Festival has blossomed into an extended weekend celebration that attracts more than 300,000 people and generates more than $51 million for the local economy. The Festival showcases our community’s rich array of artwork, gardens, history and culture through recreational, educational and family-oriented events.
About Belk, Inc.
Belk, Inc., a private department store company based in Charlotte, N.C., is the home of Modern. Southern. Style. with 296 Belk stores located in 16 Southern states and a growing digital presence. Belk is a portfolio company of Sycamore Partners, a private equity firm based in New York. Belk and www.belk.com offer a wide assortment of national brands and private label fashion apparel, shoes and accessories for the entire family along with top name cosmetics, a wedding registry and a large selection of quality merchandise for the home.
Belk offers many ways to connect via digital and social media, including Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Google Plus, and provides exclusive offers, fashion updates, sales notifications and coupons via email or mobile phone text messages. Customers can also download the latest Belk mobile apps for the iPad, iPhone or Android.
The North Carolina Azalea Festival Thanks Its Sponsors
Belk
Miller Lite
Hilton Wilmington Riverside
Duke Energy
Wells Fargo
New Hanover Regional Medical Center
R.A. Jeffreys
UNC Wilmington
LM Restaurants
BB & T
Wilmington Health
BlueCross and BlueShield of NC
Coastal Carolina Neonatology/Coastal Children’s Services
Colonial Marketing
Coca-Cola
Corning
Live Oak Bank
MassMutual Financial Group
Nangle Consulting
NewBridge Bank
North Carolina Ports
ONEHOPE Wine
Pacifica Senior Living
Parkway of Wilmington
PNC
PPD
SEPI Engineering & Construction
