The crowd throws their hands in the air during Erykah Badu's performance at Red Hat Amphitheater for Hopscotch Music Festival on Sept. 9, 2016. Badu's plane was delayed and she ended up taking the stage about 2 hours late." />
Bryan Murphy
The crowd throws their hands in the air during Erykah Badu's performance at Red Hat Amphitheater for Hopscotch Music Festival on Sept. 9, 2016. Badu's plane was delayed and she ended up taking the stage about 2 hours late.
If you drive in Raleigh at all, chances are that, at some point, you have heard music coming from downtown. Located right off of S Dawson St., the Red Hat Amphitheater is likely the source. Its prominent location — right under the iconic Raleigh oak tree sign — makes it hard to miss.
For NC State students looking to attend a show at any venue, there are many questions that must be considered: how are the seats, is parking free and what do the ticket prices look like, just to name a few. This writer attended his first Red Hat show just last week, looking for answers to these questions.
Tickets
Before you attend a show, you have to buy a ticket. Tickets to Red Hat shows are available online, and can be printed out or accessed through scanning codes via a smartphone. However, purchasing online comes with those pesky Ticketmaster fees. To avoid this, there are alternative ticket purchasing methods.
According to Taylor Traversari, Red Hat Amphitheater’s general manager, attendees can avoid most ticket service fees by buying tickets in person from the venue’s sister locations. Both the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts and the Walnut Creek Amphitheatre have physical box offices where tickets for Red Hat shows are sold.
“There is still a facility ticket fee, but I always find it well worth your time to come in person,” Traversari said. “You can save a considerable amount by coming on location in advance of the show.”
Both locations are open Monday through Friday. Duke Energy is open 9 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. and Walnut Creek is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Parking
Now that you have your ticket, you need to figure out how you are going to travel to the venue. Red Hat, while close by, is definitely too far from campus to be considered within a safe walking distance. However, that doesn’t mean driving is the only option.
The R-LINE, a free Raleigh bus line, has a stop right next to the venue on Cabarrus Street. The R-LINE operates until 2:15 a.m. on weekends and has a stop near Hillsborough Street on Glenwood Avenue. While this route doesn’t totally eliminate walking, it makes the distance much more manageable and safe.
For those that drive to the venue, the Amphitheater has several parking garages nearby, including the Performing Arts Parking Deck, which has $7 event parking.
According to Traversari, the venue works with the Raleigh Police Department to close down the nearby streets so that attendees can quickly and safely get back to their cars after shows. Traversari said that this system keeps traffic leaving the venue flowing, and gets people out of parking garages in less than fifteen minutes.
For those looking to drive without paying any parking, there is also the North Carolina Museum of History’s surface lot, which is free all day on weekends and after 5 p.m. on weekdays.
Seating
The layout of the Red Hat Amphitheater is pretty standard. The venue is a box, with one corner devoted to a raised stage. In front of the stage is the primary seating, flanked by two angled sections to the right and left of the stage. Behind those are four more sections of chairs and the lawn, which wraps around the outside of the whole area opposite the stage.
Lawn seating, while the cheapest option, still has a decent view of the stage despite being the farthest away. Only a handful of light towers obstruct the view and the sound manages to stretch back to the lawn without spilling over into the rest of downtown.
“Over time, we’ve really figured out the positioning of our speakers and how to angle them directly towards the crowd,” Traversari said. “The stage is a massive stage, but we hang the speakers a little lower so that the sound is pinpointed towards the crowd.”
Griffin Matthews, a junior studying business, attended his first Red Hat show last Thursday, a performance by the rapper Logic.
“It was my first time out to Red Hat and I was really impressed,” Matthews said. “There didn’t seem to be a bad seat in the venue and everything sounded great.”
Red Hat Amphitheater hosts around 40 shows per season and operates from early April to mid-October each year.