Reggae Rise Up Florida returns to Vinoy Park

As you’re reading this, an army of 400 is swarming over Vinoy Park, on the St. Petersburg bayfront, setting up for this weekend’s Reggae Rise Up Florida Festival.

The workers, the majority of them locally-hired, will be toiling day and night to put the music and lifestyle celebration’s three stages and associated public areas together, plugging everything in and making sure it all works. Then there’s the temporary fencing that goes around the festival site.

It’s been this way since 2014, when Utah-based LNE Events first brought the reggae music extravaganza to Vinoy Park. It began as a two-day event, then expanded to three, then to four.

“We’ll start planning for 2025 probably a month after this one ends,” laughs Vaughn Carrick, CEO of Live Night Events, which has produced Reggae Rise Up since the beginning. Erasing the festival footprint – restoring the park to its pre-Rise Up appearance – takes an additional three days.

This Thursday through Sunday, 15,000 to 20,000 people are expected to descend on the park, per day, to hear dozens of reggae and reggae rock bands and artists.

A 2022 economic study found that the previous year’s festival pumped $22 million into the local economy.

Carrick and company were operating a reggae festival in Salt Lake City when the bright and shiny Pinellas peninsula caught his eye. “I was spending a lot of time in St. Pete, and I was just kind of noticing the culture there,” he says. “The fan base (for reggae) is pretty strong. And there’s kind of a beach culture there.”

As an already-seasoned concert promoter, “I was watching and looking at some of the tours that were coming through. Some of the bands were selling out  couple nights at Jannus (Live). The State Theatre back then was doing a bunch of shows – I remember going to Steel Pulse there – and I just picked up on it. I thought ‘This makes a lot more sense than Utah, honestly.’”

The first bay Reggae Rise Up Florida took place in September, 2014 – at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium. “That,” says Carrick, “was probably our worst event. It got rained out. We decided to come back anyway, and now it’s our strongest event across the country.”

With Utah off the Rise Up map, there are now Reggae Rise Up Festivals in Las Vegas, Baltimore and “two more markets we’re about to announce.”

Even though the first Florida fest was held in 2014, this isn’t the 10^th annual; they skipped 2020, during the height of the Covid lockdown.

Carrick, who says he’s trying to convince his fiancé to move to St. Petersburg fulltime, also books Jannus Live, the Floridian Social Club and Bayboro Brewing Co.

His company is responsible for the Rise Up St. Pete concert series on the St. Pete Pier, which concluded its inaugural season in January.

“We have a good partnership with The Pier, and The City,” he explains. “It was a joint venture between all three of us. We want to bring some attention, and drive some bodies, over to The Pier, and we feel that Spa Beach has some great sightlines – you can see the city, and get out there on the peninsula and enjoy some good music.”

The series, he adds, will return in November and December (but not January, most likely. He isn’t sure yet).

“We learned a lot this year, but I think overall it was a great success,” Carrick says. “From what we heard from people, whether in the city or fans, artists, or artist agents, everyone’s been really stoked on it.”

For all information (including tickets and performance schedule), click here.