Spotlight • Slingshot

The Willson Center for the Humanities and Arts has taken our soon-to-be three-year-old Spotlight on the Arts festival up to the mountaintop, wizened it beyond its years into a learned and marvelous, venerable arts festival joining the best of campus with some of the greatest parts of Athens (as we know it) and brought it back to College Square for an unimaginably fantastic concert this week:

Spotlight • Slingshot is a free public concert on College Square in downtown Athens featuring five acclaimed local and national acts, many including UGA graduates and attendees.

Topping the bill will be an orchestrated performance of 1970s Memphis band Big Star’s legendary Third album, with an all-star band featuring original Big Star drummer Jody Stephens, Mike Mills of R.E.M., Chris Stamey of the dB’s, Mitch Easterof Let’s Active, Pat Sansone of Wilco, and Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer of Big Star and The Posies. Special guests will include local artists T. Hardy Morris and Thayer Sarrano.

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Local acts The Glands, New Madrid, Blacknerdninja, andRuby the RabbitFoot will share the bill. The Glands, who released two acclaimed albums in 1997 and 2000, will be playing just their second show in Athens since headlining AthFest in 2012. Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers has called the band’s self-titled second album “my favorite album of this century and also my all-time favorite album ever to come out of Athens, Georgia.”

This is what the Spotlight is for. Let it shine brightly. See you downtown Saturday.