“We haven’t been here in a very long time,” Tarronia “Tank” Ball said Saturday evening from the outdoor main stage of the SouthSounds Music Festival. “And we’ve missed you very much!”

Many of the hundreds of people watching Tank & The Bangas headline the second day of the fest probably would have said the same about SouthSounds itself. 2023 is the first year that SouthSounds has been able to present a full lineup since 2019. After two dormant years, a “SouthSounds Showcase” in 2022 offered a taste of the way things used to be. But Saturday evening, the festival’s eclectic, upbeat sensibility was back in full force as bands played in two Conception Street venues – The Merry Widow and the Alabama Music Box – plus the main stage behind the Merry Widow.

Across a few evening acts – Equal Creatures from Atlanta, The Mummy Cats from Birmingham, LeTrainiump and Tank & The Bangas from New Orleans, McKinley Dixon from Richmond, Va. – the fest gave listeners hard rock, hip-hop, funk, R&B, indie emo rock, soul and maybe a touch of jazz. And it was rarely just one of those coming from any given stage at a time: Even The Mummy Cats diverged from their blazing classic hard rock for an interlude as the “Jazz Cats.”

One of festival organizers’ stated goals was to expose Mobile listeners to some up-and-coming Southeastern acts, and to give new acts a foothold in Mobile’s scene. Before introducing an emo-rock song titled “Waylon,” in tribute to the way Waylon Jennings’ song “Storms Never Last” spoke to her during a moment of crisis, Equal Creatures vocalist Laurie Ray made some remarks indicating that the plan was working.

“It’s so nice to be in Mobile. I’ve never been here,” she said. “It’s really cool to play shows out of state, see your band on a poster.”

The festival continues through Sunday, with an all-day art market at The Merry Widow opening at 3 p.m. Music starts at 3:30; featured acts include Jesse Cotton Stone, Blackwater Brass, Nanafalia, Zach Edwards, Aden Paul and The Silver Spades, the Bankhead Boys and JoJo Hermann of Widespread Panic, whose headlining set starts at 7:30 p.m.

Single-day tickets are $40, available on-site. For updates, visit https://www.facebook.com/SouthSoundsMusicFest. For a sampler of featured bands, check out the festival’s Spotify playlist.