In six days, Tom Lee Park will transform from a quiet stretch of riverfront grass into one of the largest outdoor music venues in the South. The Beale Street Music Festival kicks off May 3, and if past years are any indication, more than 100,000 people will pass through the gates over three days of music, beer, and Memphis heat.
Most of those people won’t think twice about security. They’ll walk through metal detectors, open their bags for inspection, and forget about it by the time they reach the first stage. That’s exactly how it’s supposed to work. What they don’t see is the months of planning, hundreds of personnel, and thousands of details that go into making sure a festival weekend stays fun instead of turning dangerous.
I’ve been covering Memphis in May’s security operation for several years now, and every year the complexity grows. More attendees, more stages, more moving parts. The security teams that pull this off don’t get enough credit. Here’s how it works.
The Memphis in May Security Machine
Memphis in May International Festival is a nonprofit that produces three major events each May: the Beale Street Music Festival (first weekend), the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest (mid-month), and the Great American River Run. Each event has different security needs, different crowd profiles, and different headaches.
The festival organization contracts with both MPD and private security companies to cover its events. MPD provides sworn officers who handle law enforcement functions: arrests, criminal complaints, traffic control on Riverside Drive and the surrounding streets. Private security firms provide the bulk of the personnel for access control, bag checks, perimeter patrol, and crowd management inside the festival grounds.
The split makes sense when you think about it. A private security guard can check bags and scan tickets. They can’t arrest someone. When a fight breaks out or someone gets caught selling drugs near the portable toilets, that’s a police matter. The two groups work different jobs in the same space, and the coordination between them is what separates a well-run event from a disaster.
Director Rallings and MPD have been part of the Memphis in May planning process since last fall. The department assigns a command staff officer to coordinate with festival organizers, and MPD’s Special Events unit handles the operational details — officer assignments, traffic plans, communication frequencies, and response protocols.
What 100,000 People Look Like
The Beale Street Music Festival regularly draws over 100,000 attendees across its three-day run. That number is spread out. Friday evening is usually the lightest, Saturday afternoon through night is the peak, and Sunday tapers off. But even the lightest hours put thousands of people in a confined riverside park with limited entry and exit points.
Tom Lee Park runs along the Mississippi River bluff, roughly from Beale Street south toward the old bridge. The park is long and narrow, which creates natural bottlenecks. The main entrance off Riverside Drive handles the heaviest foot traffic, and that’s where the security screening process either works smoothly or creates a backup that stretches down the block.
Every person entering the festival passes through a metal detector checkpoint. Bags are opened and visually inspected. Prohibited items include weapons, glass bottles, coolers over a certain size, professional cameras with detachable lenses. All of these get turned away at the gate. The list of prohibited items grows every year, and that means the screening process takes longer every year.
Guards working the entry points need to be fast and consistent. Slow screening creates long lines, and long lines create angry crowds. Angry crowds create problems. The best event security companies train their gate staff specifically on speed and efficiency — how to open and inspect a bag in under five seconds, how to keep the line moving while still catching the things that matter.
The Perimeter Problem
Once you’re past the gates, you’re inside a fenced perimeter. That perimeter is the single most important piece of festival security infrastructure, and maintaining it is a full-time job.
Tom Lee Park’s perimeter runs along temporary fencing that goes up a week before the festival. The fence line follows the park boundary, with sections along the river bluff, around the parking areas, and across the northern and southern ends. Every foot of that fence is a potential entry point for someone who doesn’t want to buy a ticket or pass through a metal detector.
Private security firms assign patrol teams to walk the fence line continuously during festival hours. They’re looking for fence jumpers, gaps in the barrier, and anything else that compromises the perimeter. Last year, a section of temporary fencing near the south end of the park was knocked down by wind overnight, and the security patrol team discovered it at 5 AM, hours before gates opened. Had that gap gone unnoticed, it would have been an unscreened entry point for anyone who happened to walk by.
The river side of the park presents its own challenge. You can’t fence the Mississippi, and while it’s unlikely that someone would swim or boat to the festival to avoid a $35 ticket, the security plan has to account for it. Patrols along the riverbank are lighter than the street-side perimeter, but they exist.
Inside the Grounds
Inside the festival, security takes a different form. The visible guards at the gates give way to a more distributed presence. Guards are stationed at each stage area, roaming teams moving through the crowd, and supervisors monitoring from elevated positions.
The stage areas are high-priority zones. When a headlining act draws 30,000 people to the main stage on Saturday night, crowd density near the front becomes a safety issue. Security teams at the stage barricade watch for crowd surges, medical emergencies, and the inevitable person who tries to climb the barrier. These posts require guards who can stay calm in the middle of a screaming crowd and make quick decisions about when to intervene and when to let things play out.
The beer tents and concession areas are another focus. Alcohol and large crowds are a predictable combination, and the security presence around beverage service points is deliberate. Guards watch for underage drinking, over-intoxication, and the arguments that tend to start around 10 PM when people have been drinking in the sun all day.
Medical emergencies are a constant during outdoor festivals. Heat exhaustion, dehydration, twisted ankles, and the occasional drug-related incident keep the on-site medical teams busy. Security guards are often the first to spot someone in distress and radio for medical assistance. Basic first aid training isn’t just a nice-to-have for event security staff — it’s a necessity.
The Barbecue Contest: A Different Kind of Challenge
Two weeks after the Beale Street Music Festival wraps up, Tom Lee Park hosts the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. The security profile for this event is different in almost every way.
The barbecue contest draws a large crowd, but the audience is spread across a much wider area and the vibe is more relaxed. Teams set up cooking stations throughout the park, and spectators wander between them. There’s no main stage pulling everyone to one spot, so crowd density is lower and more evenly distributed.
The security challenges here are more about property protection and alcohol management than crowd control. Barbecue teams bring tens of thousands of dollars worth of smokers, grills, and equipment. They set up days before the competition starts and leave their gear overnight. Theft from team sites has been an issue in past years, and overnight security patrols through the competition area are a standard part of the security plan.
The barbecue contest also has a party atmosphere that runs late into the night, particularly in the areas where teams host private parties. These gatherings can get rowdy, and the security presence around team party areas after midnight is heavier than most attendees realize.
How Event Security Contracts Work
For security companies in Memphis, landing a Memphis in May contract is a major win. It’s high-profile work that looks good on a company’s client list, and it generates significant revenue over a compressed time period.
The contract process typically starts months before the events. Memphis in May issues requests for proposals to security companies, specifying the number of personnel needed, the types of posts, the hours of coverage, and the qualifications required. Companies submit bids that include their proposed staffing plan, hourly rates, supervisor-to-guard ratios, and relevant experience.
Price matters, obviously. So does experience. A company that has worked the festival before and performed well has an advantage over a newcomer. Event security is specialized work, and companies that have done it understand the pace, the problems, and the pressure in ways that companies new to the field don’t.
The winning company needs to supply a large number of guards for a short period. A typical Memphis in May security contract might require 80 to 150 guards across three days for the music festival alone. Not every security company in Memphis can field that many people on short notice, particularly during a season when every other client also wants extra coverage.
Hourly rates for event security in Memphis run between $15 and $25 per hour, depending on the post type and whether the guard is armed or unarmed. Most festival posts are unarmed. Armed guards are typically stationed at the main gates, the box office where cash is handled, and any VIP areas where talent or sponsors are present.
The Coordination Challenge
The hardest part of festival security isn’t any single task. It’s making all the pieces work together.
MPD, private security, festival staff, medical teams, fire department, emergency management. All of these groups operate in the same space during Memphis in May events. They use different radio frequencies, different chains of command, and different priorities. Getting them to communicate effectively when something goes wrong is the real test.
Memphis in May operates a command post during each event that brings representatives from each group into one room. When an incident occurs, the command post coordinates the response. A medical emergency at the main stage, for example, might require private security to clear a path through the crowd, medical staff to treat the patient, MPD to manage traffic for an ambulance exit, and festival staff to communicate with the stage manager about a possible show pause.
That kind of coordination doesn’t happen by accident. It takes planning sessions that start in January, walkthroughs of the venue in March and April, and tabletop exercises where the various teams practice responding to scenarios. The companies that win these contracts invest real time in pre-event coordination. Those that don’t tend to be one-and-done operators who never get invited back.
What Could Go Wrong
Nobody in the security business likes to talk about worst-case scenarios publicly, but privately, every event security manager has a list. Active shooter situations at outdoor events have changed the calculus for festival security nationwide. Las Vegas in 2017 rewrote the playbook, and every major outdoor festival since then has had to reckon with the possibility.
Memphis in May’s response to that reality has included increased law enforcement presence, more aggressive screening at entry points, and adjustments to the physical layout of the festival grounds that I won’t detail here because some security measures work best when they’re not public knowledge.
Weather is the other major concern. Memphis in May takes place during tornado season, and severe thunderstorms in early May are common. A lightning warning during a packed festival requires an evacuation plan that can move tens of thousands of people to shelter quickly. That plan exists, and it’s been tested, though thankfully it hasn’t been needed in full scale.
The Bottom Line
Memphis in May is the biggest annual test of this city’s event security capabilities. When it goes well, and most years it does, nobody notices the work that went into it. The guards blend into the background, the fences hold, the screening lines move, and 100,000 people have a good time on the river.
When something goes wrong, the security operation is the first thing everyone examines. That’s the nature of the work. You’re invisible when you succeed and exposed when you fail.
Six days from now, the gates open. The metal detectors will be in place. The fence line will be patrolled. The command post will be staffed. And somewhere in Tom Lee Park, a guard will be checking bags at a speed that would impress a TSA agent, hoping for three quiet days and knowing that preparation is the only thing standing between a great festival and a bad headline.
If you’re heading to the Beale Street Music Festival, leave the glass bottles at home, bring some patience for the security line, and tip your hat to the people standing in the sun checking bags. They’re earning every dollar.