Cover Story: Lend them your ears
Two competing festivals, five days of music, one city. Does it have to be an either/or proposition?
On the one hand, you’ve got to feel for Kathy Gates. From a Marietta office that’s smaller than the bedroom most of us had in high school, Gates assembles the Atlantis Music Conference. For 11 months out of the year, she faces the daunting logistical nightmare that comes with hosting more than 200 bands, tens of thousands of fans, and sundry industry reps and media over four nights at some 12 Atlanta venues stretching from Little Five Points to downtown. To appreciate the enormity of the task, simply glance around her shared workspace, which is overflowing with demo tapes and CDs, posters, T-shirts and mountains of paperwork. And Gates has had something less tangible and potentially more ominous to contend with: Just 5 years old this year, Atlantis is already deflecting claims that it’s too big for its own good. That it’s little more than a schmoozy industry showcase for bands who’ve already landed record deals. That it’s neglecting those who need it most: obscure, unsigned artists. All this despite the fact that the conference was founded on the noble desire to draw attention to the Atlanta music scene. Even the numbers seem to tell a different story: This year, Gates estimates that 95 percent of the acts playing Atlantis are unsigned. “I hate that they say we might be ignoring [struggling, independent artists],” she says.
Perhaps even more telling, Atlantis has yet to turn a profit.
“At this point, the operation has not made penny one,” says Gates. “A couple of years, we’ve broken even; others, we barely covered expenses.”
As for Gates herself, the Atlanta native spent a good part of the ’90s managing Shock Lobo, an unsigned local band that featured her husband, Jeffrey Butts, now of the unsigned act Modern Hero. She’ll tell you she’s exceedingly familiar with the struggling Atlanta artist. She also believes that Atlantis, conflicting perceptions aside, can have an impact on the music community at a grassroots level.
“Anything that brings industry attention to Atlanta lets people know there is some great music in this town,” she says.
On the other hand, you’ve got to admire the guys who’ve done their best to spin the mounting questions about Atlantis’ motivations and mission to their advantage. They’re the organizers of Independent Georgia, an upstart festival of music, art and film debuting in Atlanta July 31-Aug. 4 — during the same week as this year’s Atlantis event. The timing is no coincidence. IG organizers chose to go head-to-head with Atlantis because they believe they’re offering a worthy alternative.
“Don’t say it’s about blue when it’s about green,” says IG co-founder David Railey. “With IG, we want to say, ‘Finally, here’s something that represents the arts community.’”
IG organizers Railey, Tim Smith, Patrick Hill, Alex Weiss and Jason Hatcher (a CL employee) spend a good portion of their time playing in bands and/or generally involving themselves in the local music business. They’ve based the festival in the suitably edgy urban hamlet of East Atlanta, at venues like The Earl, the Echo Lounge, Eyedrum, Gravity Pub, Raw Gallery and others. Unlike Atlantis, IG is ignoring the business side completely. There will be no speakers, songwriting seminars, how-to brainstorming sessions or career counseling. IG is all about music, art and film.
“We have no interest in an industry event,” says Smith.
Assembled at The Earl on a recent weekday, Railey, Weiss and Smith say the idea for the festival came to them at the end of last year. Railey, who plays in the band American Dream and organizes the annual Corndogorama band marathon, and Smith, who runs East Atlanta video shop Village Vidiot, started talking over beers about how Atlantis’ industry-friendly vibe simply didn’t work for them. By February 2002, they’d set a goal to have their own festival ready to go by later this year. Ideas for IG immediately flowed, and timing of the event came naturally. “Let’s just say we didn’t pick that date on accident,” Smith says.
And the IG crew found support immediately. Echo Lounge booker Weiss, for one, had previously hosted Atlantis events. But this year, he signed on with IG. “We’re trying to showcase people who might never be extremely successful artists,” Weiss says.
That goal stretches beyond music. Along with the 75-plus bands slated to perform (including many from outside Georgia), the four-day affair includes art exhibits, film screenings, spoken-word readings and a barbecue on the west side of Atlanta.
“We want a real mind-fuck,” says Smith. “We want to have things going on at all times.”
IG is a grassroots, backroom operation all the way. To contact IG, you simply dial the cell phone number of one of the organizers and hope you’re not waking them after a long night. (Atlantis employs a PR agency — though Gates invites calls on weekdays and weekends.) Organizers also have shunned a selection system that forces bands to compete — or pay — for showcase slots. The way they see it, IG is promoting artists who need the most promoting: the ones you haven’t yet heard about, the ones who aren’t even close to being signed.
IG has at least one fan in the Atlantis camp: Kathy Gates. “I wish they had called me,” she says. “We could have worked together.”
But Gates is also a realist. To that end, Atlantis isn’t about to distance itself from the mainstream. It openly courts major-label participation. Gates contends that signed bands bring more attention to the festival and its unsigned acts. In that way, the Atlanta area — and its music scene — ultimately benefits.
Gates says many Atlantis participants have progressed to the point where they are “about to break” — on-the-bubble acts like the Veins, Dropsonic, Ingram Hill and Debra Killings. So you probably won’t find a band of Alpharetta kids playing their first gig at Atlantis, getting signed and living the rock ‘n’ roll dream.
“If you’re really trying to attract someone like Sony, you can only put bands in that are playing on a regular basis — that are attracting a good crowd, that have a CD that’s getting good airplay,” says Gates.
For this reason, Atlantis aspires to be a hive for label A&R reps searching for fresh talent. It also means that, unlike IG, Atlantis organizers must be highly selective in choosing bands, between 30 and 40 percent of which are from the Atlanta area.
“When you have 2,000 submissions and only 220 slots to fill, some people get left out,” she says.
The Close would seem the perfect candidate for Atlantis. The local indie-rock band has been together six years. They’re putting the finishing touches on their second CD, and they’re looking to take the next step. But Atlantis won’t be part of it. In fact, the Close didn’t even apply, and lead singer/guitarist Brooks Meeks has attended the conference only once.
“It wasn’t really my speed,” he says. “It was industry-geared; it looked like the kind of thing I didn’t want to be involved in. It seems kind of cheesy to pay a bunch of money to enter this thing. We don’t have any money. We’ve been broke for years.”
Meeks tries to be diplomatic about Atlantis’ sorry status in the eyes of the musicians he knows. “Everybody has bad things to say,” he says. “I’m not sure where that came from or where that started. Maybe it’s bitterness. Maybe people send stuff in to Atlantis but haven’t been chosen.”
Of course, one way to avoid an Atlantis rejection is to not send anything in the first place — like the Close. Instead, they’ll play an Aug. 3 IG showcase at The Earl. And despite IG’s unproven rep, they’re excited about the possibilities.
“Every time we play a show, we’re hoping somebody will be there who might be interested in working with us,” Meeks says. “We’ve been playing Atlanta for a while, and we kind of feel like we’re on a plateau right now.”
Uncrowned is feeling just the opposite. Also based in Atlanta, the group has branded its Stone Temple Pilots-meets-Foo Fighters-meets-Rage Against the Machine sound “modern edge” — just the sort of catchphrase that makes label scouts and radio programmers alike swoon. Uncrowned played Atlantis last year under the name Falling Up, a gig that turned out to be a smart career move. XM Radio, a satellite service with more than 130,000 subscribers, came calling shortly after their showcase.
“We had one of our songs played on XM radio because of the Atlantis compilation CD, and XM asked us for more material,” says Uncrowned guitarist Jack Andrad. “Our song ‘Queen of New York’ is on regular rotation with them now.”
Uncrowned’s Atlantis showcase also led to bookings at local clubs and events like Music Midtown. This year, the Uncrowned plays Atlantis Aug. 2 at 10 High.
“We’ve actually had labels call Atlantis and us to see when we’re playing,” Andrad says. “There’s a buzz built up.”
The band hopes that buzz will culminate in a deal with a label — major or independent.
“I want to do this for a career, whatever that entails,” says Andrad. “If that’s a major label, that’s great.”
Atlantis’ roots aren’t so different from those of IG. The festival was founded in 1998 by Rich Levy, Mark Willis and Lee Beitchman. After working for years in the local music scene, Levy and Willis were out to give the Atlanta scene a lift. And they say it’s been an uphill struggle from day one.
“Atlantis has come under tremendous criticism from its inception,” says Levy. “Mark and I have always told our detractors: ‘If you don’t like what we are doing, do your own event.’ We are both happy and impressed that IG has chosen to do something positive that contributes — as opposed to doing something that is critical or detracts from the Atlanta music community.”
This year, the Atlantis folks are planning new events geared toward locals. Most notably, they’re expanding their focus on the thriving local urban scene. In the past, they featured just one showcase; this year, Atlantis is offering three showcases covering hip-hop, soul and gospel. A job fair complements the usual panels on topics like “How to Give Great Phone and Other Ways to Get a Foot in the Door,” “How to Make It in the Music Business,” “Promoting Your Music to Radio.” And as always, there’s the Atlanta Local Music Awards. Celebrating its 10th anniversary recognizing local talent, the ALMAs kick off the conference July 31 at Earthlink Live.
Yet, try as it might, Atlantis may never silence the grumbling of those who contend the conference caters to corporate labels, their politics and that dreaded bottom line. Among the more popular gripes: that Atlantis requires an application fee (anywhere from $15 to $25, depending on how early you apply), and charges participating bands for all but one all-access pass — albeit at a discounted rate of $75 a piece.
It’s a practice that’s not uncommon with the bigger music conferences around the country. In Atlantis’ case, all the money from application fees and passes goes toward staffing expenses.
But for others in the local scene, it’s more about exclusion than expense.
“Everyone in this office has attended the Atlantis conference once,” says Amy Leavell, head of publicity for local label Terminus Records. “But not one person from Atlantis has ever contacted us to be involved. I’m not sure what message, if any, that sends. I personally don’t think they are championing the little guy.”
But Leavell admits the problem isn’t unique to Atlantis.
“Overall, I think music conferences offer false illusions to unsigned bands or artists,” she says. “They sell dreams that aren’t the reality. I think most artists think that it looks good on paper to have played music conferences, but it honestly wouldn’t sway anyone in this office to see that a band has played one. If a band is good, then they are good — period, with or without having played South By Southwest or Atlantis or any of the conferences.”
Simply put, South By Southwest is everything Atlantis aspires to be: a highly visible, internationally reputable focal point for the music community. Since debuting in Austin, Texas, in 1987, SXSW has become a monster of its own making, sporting interactive and film conferences to go with the week-long mega-music conference, which offers showcases by more than a thousand bands from all over the world. More than any other music conference — other than, perhaps, the CMJ New Music Marathon in New York City — SXSW has become the measuring stick by which all other conferences are measured. But how much it has actually helped Austin’s already formidable music scene is difficult to measure.
“SXSW has always been a reflection of the Austin music scene — what venues are available, what bands are available, what labels are around,” says SXSW Creative Director Brent Grulke. “Has it had any kind of profound impact and made Austin music business more financially successful in a large way? I don’t know.”
Grulke also offers this sobering fact: Instant success stories are a rarity at music conferences. And that holds especially true in today’s ever-constricting, profit-hungry recording industry.
“Not that it doesn’t happen — it can,” says Grulke. “But the odds are just ridiculously small. The truth of the matter is, most events like ours actually succeed less due to the fact that acts are signed, and more due to the fact that they are actually already in the position to do some business. They have [laid] the groundwork in advance.”
Truth be told, IG organizers admit they wouldn’t mind if a few label talent scouts in town for Atlantis found their way over to one of their events, happened upon a talented, unsigned Atlanta artist, and showed them the way to the dotted line. But then, that might transform IG into something else entirely, which could force its founders to weigh the success of their festival against their commitment to the unsigned, under-the-radar artist they champion. And that might, in turn, lead local artists to rip IG for selling out. Which might inspire someone to start a new festival.
But that’s assuming that IG is a success. And it’s in their vastly different definitions of success that the festivals may differ most. The IG folks say they’ll consider putting on a second fest next year if they see attendance numbers in 700-800 range. Atlantis is shooting for anything equal to or above last year’s attendance figures: 60,000 at the showcases; 2,000 at the conference, its panels and parties. (They expect a big boost from this year’s Aug. 2 Atlantis concert at the weekly Downtown Rocks live music series.)
The ones who stand to benefit most from the competing events are consumers, who may well reach their threshold of live music intake — independent or no, unsigned or signed. Combine the lineups of both events, and you’ve got about 275 acts playing over the course of just a few summer days. Not a bad haul.
And you’d think that more bands would be taking advantage of the unique opportunity afforded by competing conferences on the same days, in the same city. Think about it: two showcases, twice the exposure. But after some research, we could uncover only two: the Hiss and Myssouri (see Earshot).
Atlantis’ Kathy Gates finds the doubling-up concept “interesting,” though she’s not sure if it makes good strategic sense.
“We ask bands to be very upfront with us about whether or not they’re playing the week before or the week after Atlantis,” she says. “One reason for this is because, if they play soon before or soon after Atlantis, they probably won’t draw as well at both shows. No local bands have that kind of draw to fill two big shows. I hope it works out for them.”
The Atlantis Music Conference and the Independent Georgia Music Art Film festival run Wed.-Sun., July 31-Aug. 4. For more info, visit www.atlantismusic.com and www.independentgeorgia.org.
Perhaps even more telling, Atlantis has yet to turn a profit.
“At this point, the operation has not made penny one,” says Gates. “A couple of years, we’ve broken even; others, we barely covered expenses.”
As for Gates herself, the Atlanta native spent a good part of the ’90s managing Shock Lobo, an unsigned local band that featured her husband, Jeffrey Butts, now of the unsigned act Modern Hero. She’ll tell you she’s exceedingly familiar with the struggling Atlanta artist. She also believes that Atlantis, conflicting perceptions aside, can have an impact on the music community at a grassroots level.
“Anything that brings industry attention to Atlanta lets people know there is some great music in this town,” she says.
On the other hand, you’ve got to admire the guys who’ve done their best to spin the mounting questions about Atlantis’ motivations and mission to their advantage. They’re the organizers of Independent Georgia, an upstart festival of music, art and film debuting in Atlanta July 31-Aug. 4 — during the same week as this year’s Atlantis event. The timing is no coincidence. IG organizers chose to go head-to-head with Atlantis because they believe they’re offering a worthy alternative.
“Don’t say it’s about blue when it’s about green,” says IG co-founder David Railey. “With IG, we want to say, ‘Finally, here’s something that represents the arts community.’”
IG organizers Railey, Tim Smith, Patrick Hill, Alex Weiss and Jason Hatcher (a CL employee) spend a good portion of their time playing in bands and/or generally involving themselves in the local music business. They’ve based the festival in the suitably edgy urban hamlet of East Atlanta, at venues like The Earl, the Echo Lounge, Eyedrum, Gravity Pub, Raw Gallery and others. Unlike Atlantis, IG is ignoring the business side completely. There will be no speakers, songwriting seminars, how-to brainstorming sessions or career counseling. IG is all about music, art and film.
“We have no interest in an industry event,” says Smith.
Assembled at The Earl on a recent weekday, Railey, Weiss and Smith say the idea for the festival came to them at the end of last year. Railey, who plays in the band American Dream and organizes the annual Corndogorama band marathon, and Smith, who runs East Atlanta video shop Village Vidiot, started talking over beers about how Atlantis’ industry-friendly vibe simply didn’t work for them. By February 2002, they’d set a goal to have their own festival ready to go by later this year. Ideas for IG immediately flowed, and timing of the event came naturally. “Let’s just say we didn’t pick that date on accident,” Smith says.
And the IG crew found support immediately. Echo Lounge booker Weiss, for one, had previously hosted Atlantis events. But this year, he signed on with IG. “We’re trying to showcase people who might never be extremely successful artists,” Weiss says.
That goal stretches beyond music. Along with the 75-plus bands slated to perform (including many from outside Georgia), the four-day affair includes art exhibits, film screenings, spoken-word readings and a barbecue on the west side of Atlanta.
“We want a real mind-fuck,” says Smith. “We want to have things going on at all times.”
IG is a grassroots, backroom operation all the way. To contact IG, you simply dial the cell phone number of one of the organizers and hope you’re not waking them after a long night. (Atlantis employs a PR agency — though Gates invites calls on weekdays and weekends.) Organizers also have shunned a selection system that forces bands to compete — or pay — for showcase slots. The way they see it, IG is promoting artists who need the most promoting: the ones you haven’t yet heard about, the ones who aren’t even close to being signed.
IG has at least one fan in the Atlantis camp: Kathy Gates. “I wish they had called me,” she says. “We could have worked together.”
But Gates is also a realist. To that end, Atlantis isn’t about to distance itself from the mainstream. It openly courts major-label participation. Gates contends that signed bands bring more attention to the festival and its unsigned acts. In that way, the Atlanta area — and its music scene — ultimately benefits.
Gates says many Atlantis participants have progressed to the point where they are “about to break” — on-the-bubble acts like the Veins, Dropsonic, Ingram Hill and Debra Killings. So you probably won’t find a band of Alpharetta kids playing their first gig at Atlantis, getting signed and living the rock ‘n’ roll dream.
“If you’re really trying to attract someone like Sony, you can only put bands in that are playing on a regular basis — that are attracting a good crowd, that have a CD that’s getting good airplay,” says Gates.
For this reason, Atlantis aspires to be a hive for label A&R reps searching for fresh talent. It also means that, unlike IG, Atlantis organizers must be highly selective in choosing bands, between 30 and 40 percent of which are from the Atlanta area.
“When you have 2,000 submissions and only 220 slots to fill, some people get left out,” she says.
The Close would seem the perfect candidate for Atlantis. The local indie-rock band has been together six years. They’re putting the finishing touches on their second CD, and they’re looking to take the next step. But Atlantis won’t be part of it. In fact, the Close didn’t even apply, and lead singer/guitarist Brooks Meeks has attended the conference only once.
“It wasn’t really my speed,” he says. “It was industry-geared; it looked like the kind of thing I didn’t want to be involved in. It seems kind of cheesy to pay a bunch of money to enter this thing. We don’t have any money. We’ve been broke for years.”
Meeks tries to be diplomatic about Atlantis’ sorry status in the eyes of the musicians he knows. “Everybody has bad things to say,” he says. “I’m not sure where that came from or where that started. Maybe it’s bitterness. Maybe people send stuff in to Atlantis but haven’t been chosen.”
Of course, one way to avoid an Atlantis rejection is to not send anything in the first place — like the Close. Instead, they’ll play an Aug. 3 IG showcase at The Earl. And despite IG’s unproven rep, they’re excited about the possibilities.
“Every time we play a show, we’re hoping somebody will be there who might be interested in working with us,” Meeks says. “We’ve been playing Atlanta for a while, and we kind of feel like we’re on a plateau right now.”
Uncrowned is feeling just the opposite. Also based in Atlanta, the group has branded its Stone Temple Pilots-meets-Foo Fighters-meets-Rage Against the Machine sound “modern edge” — just the sort of catchphrase that makes label scouts and radio programmers alike swoon. Uncrowned played Atlantis last year under the name Falling Up, a gig that turned out to be a smart career move. XM Radio, a satellite service with more than 130,000 subscribers, came calling shortly after their showcase.
“We had one of our songs played on XM radio because of the Atlantis compilation CD, and XM asked us for more material,” says Uncrowned guitarist Jack Andrad. “Our song ‘Queen of New York’ is on regular rotation with them now.”
Uncrowned’s Atlantis showcase also led to bookings at local clubs and events like Music Midtown. This year, the Uncrowned plays Atlantis Aug. 2 at 10 High.
“We’ve actually had labels call Atlantis and us to see when we’re playing,” Andrad says. “There’s a buzz built up.”
The band hopes that buzz will culminate in a deal with a label — major or independent.
“I want to do this for a career, whatever that entails,” says Andrad. “If that’s a major label, that’s great.”
Atlantis’ roots aren’t so different from those of IG. The festival was founded in 1998 by Rich Levy, Mark Willis and Lee Beitchman. After working for years in the local music scene, Levy and Willis were out to give the Atlanta scene a lift. And they say it’s been an uphill struggle from day one.
“Atlantis has come under tremendous criticism from its inception,” says Levy. “Mark and I have always told our detractors: ‘If you don’t like what we are doing, do your own event.’ We are both happy and impressed that IG has chosen to do something positive that contributes — as opposed to doing something that is critical or detracts from the Atlanta music community.”
This year, the Atlantis folks are planning new events geared toward locals. Most notably, they’re expanding their focus on the thriving local urban scene. In the past, they featured just one showcase; this year, Atlantis is offering three showcases covering hip-hop, soul and gospel. A job fair complements the usual panels on topics like “How to Give Great Phone and Other Ways to Get a Foot in the Door,” “How to Make It in the Music Business,” “Promoting Your Music to Radio.” And as always, there’s the Atlanta Local Music Awards. Celebrating its 10th anniversary recognizing local talent, the ALMAs kick off the conference July 31 at Earthlink Live.
Yet, try as it might, Atlantis may never silence the grumbling of those who contend the conference caters to corporate labels, their politics and that dreaded bottom line. Among the more popular gripes: that Atlantis requires an application fee (anywhere from $15 to $25, depending on how early you apply), and charges participating bands for all but one all-access pass — albeit at a discounted rate of $75 a piece.
It’s a practice that’s not uncommon with the bigger music conferences around the country. In Atlantis’ case, all the money from application fees and passes goes toward staffing expenses.
But for others in the local scene, it’s more about exclusion than expense.
“Everyone in this office has attended the Atlantis conference once,” says Amy Leavell, head of publicity for local label Terminus Records. “But not one person from Atlantis has ever contacted us to be involved. I’m not sure what message, if any, that sends. I personally don’t think they are championing the little guy.”
But Leavell admits the problem isn’t unique to Atlantis.
“Overall, I think music conferences offer false illusions to unsigned bands or artists,” she says. “They sell dreams that aren’t the reality. I think most artists think that it looks good on paper to have played music conferences, but it honestly wouldn’t sway anyone in this office to see that a band has played one. If a band is good, then they are good — period, with or without having played South By Southwest or Atlantis or any of the conferences.”
Simply put, South By Southwest is everything Atlantis aspires to be: a highly visible, internationally reputable focal point for the music community. Since debuting in Austin, Texas, in 1987, SXSW has become a monster of its own making, sporting interactive and film conferences to go with the week-long mega-music conference, which offers showcases by more than a thousand bands from all over the world. More than any other music conference — other than, perhaps, the CMJ New Music Marathon in New York City — SXSW has become the measuring stick by which all other conferences are measured. But how much it has actually helped Austin’s already formidable music scene is difficult to measure.
“SXSW has always been a reflection of the Austin music scene — what venues are available, what bands are available, what labels are around,” says SXSW Creative Director Brent Grulke. “Has it had any kind of profound impact and made Austin music business more financially successful in a large way? I don’t know.”
Grulke also offers this sobering fact: Instant success stories are a rarity at music conferences. And that holds especially true in today’s ever-constricting, profit-hungry recording industry.
“Not that it doesn’t happen — it can,” says Grulke. “But the odds are just ridiculously small. The truth of the matter is, most events like ours actually succeed less due to the fact that acts are signed, and more due to the fact that they are actually already in the position to do some business. They have [laid] the groundwork in advance.”
Truth be told, IG organizers admit they wouldn’t mind if a few label talent scouts in town for Atlantis found their way over to one of their events, happened upon a talented, unsigned Atlanta artist, and showed them the way to the dotted line. But then, that might transform IG into something else entirely, which could force its founders to weigh the success of their festival against their commitment to the unsigned, under-the-radar artist they champion. And that might, in turn, lead local artists to rip IG for selling out. Which might inspire someone to start a new festival.
But that’s assuming that IG is a success. And it’s in their vastly different definitions of success that the festivals may differ most. The IG folks say they’ll consider putting on a second fest next year if they see attendance numbers in 700-800 range. Atlantis is shooting for anything equal to or above last year’s attendance figures: 60,000 at the showcases; 2,000 at the conference, its panels and parties. (They expect a big boost from this year’s Aug. 2 Atlantis concert at the weekly Downtown Rocks live music series.)
The ones who stand to benefit most from the competing events are consumers, who may well reach their threshold of live music intake — independent or no, unsigned or signed. Combine the lineups of both events, and you’ve got about 275 acts playing over the course of just a few summer days. Not a bad haul.
And you’d think that more bands would be taking advantage of the unique opportunity afforded by competing conferences on the same days, in the same city. Think about it: two showcases, twice the exposure. But after some research, we could uncover only two: the Hiss and Myssouri (see Earshot).
Atlantis’ Kathy Gates finds the doubling-up concept “interesting,” though she’s not sure if it makes good strategic sense.
“We ask bands to be very upfront with us about whether or not they’re playing the week before or the week after Atlantis,” she says. “One reason for this is because, if they play soon before or soon after Atlantis, they probably won’t draw as well at both shows. No local bands have that kind of draw to fill two big shows. I hope it works out for them.”
The Atlantis Music Conference and the Independent Georgia Music Art Film festival run Wed.-Sun., July 31-Aug. 4. For more info, visit www.atlantismusic.com and www.independentgeorgia.org.