After 3 years, St. Pat’s in Five Points is back. Here’s what to know before you go
After three long years, there will be music in the air, copious amounts of beer flowing and various other signals of celebration as Five Points goes green.
St. Pat’s in Five Points, the four-decade old festival that draws tens of thousands of people to the shopping and nightlife village just east of the University of South Carolina, is set for Saturday, March 19. A plethora of national and regional musical acts — headlined by Grammy-winning Blues Traveler and Texas-based social media sensation Surfaces — will play multiple stages throughout the village, and the day will begin with a morning road race and parade down Devine Street.
This will be the first time since 2019 that St. Pat’s in Five Points — perhaps Columbia’s foremost music-based festival — has taken place. The 2019 and 2020 versions of St. Pat’s were canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Five Points Association board chairman Steve Cook said he’s excited for the district’s landmark festival to return, but he admitted that organizers have dealt with the complexities of reviving a multi-faceted festival that hasn’t happened since 2019.
“I’ve been describing it like a train that’s coming,” Cook said. “You know it’s coming, and you try to do your best to prepare for it. After taking two festivals off, there’s all this institutional knowledge that falls by the wayside. It’s like reviving a dead body almost. But we are very excited about where we’re at.
“I feel like there’s some excitement I haven’t felt in previous years, and I think that’s probably because it’s been gone for a while.”
The first St. Pat’s in Five Points festival was in 1982.
Saturday’s St. Pat’s celebration will kickoff with a pair of events ahead of the proper festival. At 7:30 a.m. there will be a Get to the Green Road Race that will include 10K, 5K and one-mile runs. The Get to the Green race has been around for two decades, and more than 50,000 runners have participated over that time. Registration and route information is available on the St. Pat’s in Five Points website.
At 10 a.m. Saturday the St. Pat’s Parade will begin on Devine Street near Sims Avenue and will proceed west on Devine down into Five Points. Often referred to as the “Musical Mile,” the St. Pat’s Parade will have new Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenmann as its grand marshal.
Following the parade, the festival itself will get going, with live music starting at noon on numerous stages. The festival is a ticketed affair, with tickets costing $20 in advance and $25 the day of the bash. Advance tickets can be purchased through the St. Pat’s in Five Points website, and Cook noted there will be a box office on-site Saturday.
The return of St. Pat’s brings with it a solid lineup of musical acts, organized by longtime South Carolina music booker Trae Judy and headlined by Blues Traveler and Surfaces.
Blues Traveler had two platinum-selling and three gold-selling albums in the 1990s, highlighted by 1994’s “Four,” which sold more than 6 million copies and helped nab the group a Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group. That album included the ubiquitous singles “Run-Around” and “Hook.” The group has continued to record and tour and has released 14 studio albums.
Surfaces, based out of College Station, Texas, debuted in 2017. The video for their catchy 2019 single “Sunday Best” has been viewed 127 million times on YouTube. The group is comprised of singer/songwriters Forrest Frank and Colin Padalecki.
In all there will be nearly two dozen national, regional and local acts playing the Five Points bash. One of those is burgeoning country star Lainey Wilson, who recently won Song of the Year at the Academy of Country Music awards for her hit “Things a Man Oughta Know.”
“That’s a huge deal,” Cook said of Wilson’s scheduled appearance. “Those are the kind of home runs you try to hit when you are booking this. You try to get them on the way up. Next year Lainey Wilson might not be answering our phone calls.”
The weather currently looks mostly favorable for Saturday’s celebration. Accuweather, as of Thursday afternoon, was calling for a chance of a storm early in the morning Saturday, but clearing off to partly cloudy skies through the rest of the day, with a high of 80 degrees.
There will be five stages at the 2022 St. Pat’s festival. Here’s the lineup for each of them:
Fox 102.3 & Alt 99.7 Greene and Harden Stage - Blues Traveler, Big Something, Villanova, George Fetner and The Strays, The Stews.
WXRY Disovery Harden and Blossom Stage - Surfaces, The Nude Party, The 502s, The Lottery Winners, Stranger Company.
94.3 The Dude Saluda and Devine Stage - Lainey Wilson, Corey Smith, Vagabonds, Yesterday’s Wine, Ashley Wright and The Vance Gap Ramblers.
Home Team BBQ Stage - Sourwood Honey, Jake Duby, The Ramblers, Danielle Howle and The Tantrums, The Soul Mites, Little Bird.
The Fountain Stage - DJ Prince Ice, Fat Rat Da Czar.
This story was originally published March 17, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
