On a recent weekday, long before The Merry Widow normally would have opened, a half-dozen or so people occupied tables in the bar at Conti and Conception Streets in downtown Mobile. Instead of cocktails, the tabletops in front of them held laptops, notepads and cell phones.

(Note: The festival performance schedule is at the bottom of this story.)

“If we’re awake, we’re working,” David Matthews said of the campaign to present Mobile’s first full-fledged SouthSounds Music Festival since 2019. In this room, among this group, a lot of the decisions and serendipities that define this year’s event have come together. (Among the latest developments: After some initial resistance, SouthSounds 2023 will offer single-day passes.)

From Thursday, March 30, through Sunday, April 2, SouthSounds will present more than 40 acts at three venues: The Merry Widow at 51 S. Conception St.; the Alabama Music Box, few steps away at 12 S. Conception St.; and an outdoor stage near the two. The lineup is topped by Tank and the Bangas, Susto and JoJo Hermann of Widespread Panic, and features an eclectic mix of rock bands, singer-songwriters, hip-hop acts and more.

“I’m excited about the fact that we’ve booked a lot of bands that have never played Mobile,” said Ryan Johnson, who booked the lineup along with Mathews and Chris Schwall. “It’s a lot of young bands that have been created in the last two or three of years.” (Note: The lineup includes acts that call the Mobile area home.)

Some of the acts on the bill, such as Dinny Skip and LeTrainiump, started out with online success during the COVID era and are expanding into live performance, Johnson said. Others, such as Steve Kelly and Kat Deal, are entertainers who’ve mostly been playing cover sets; for them, SouthSounds is a chance to showcase their original music.

One goal, Johnson said, was to give listeners “new music that feels relevant to what’s happening in the industry.”

Another was simply to make it fun, Mathews said. “You’re not going to show up at any of shows and have a bad time,” he said. Festival organizers wanted to build on a sense of community that is a SouthSounds trademark, he said, so they booked “immensely positive-thinking, forward-looking artists.”

SouthSounds has taken an independent, grassroots approach since 2012, or even a couple of years further back if you count precursor events. The focus has always been on up-and-coming music from the Southeast, and that has made for a broad palette. By 2019 the fest had grown into a major happening that sprawled across half a dozen venues plus a stage in Cathedral Square.

The COVID-19 pandemic killed that momentum, causing the festival to miss two years. In 2022, on very short notice, organizers put together a “SouthSounds Showcase” that offered fans a taste of what they’d been missing. Fans showed they were still hungry for it.

“We weren’t expecting the response we got last year,” said Mathews. “It was just immediate and fantastic.”

That set the stage for something more in 2023. Though the budget and the timetable are considerably bigger than in 2022, they haven’t exactly been luxurious.

“Putting something on like this typically takes six months,” said Schwall. “We did it in six weeks.”

“It’s a testament to the festival that all these bands were excited when they were contacted,” said Johnson.

“SouthSounds’ identity is what has made so many things happen so quickly,” said Courtney Harjung, another of the organizers gathered in The Merry Widow. “That’s why the artist response and the people’s response has been overwhelming to us.”

“Musicians and attendees love the identity of SouthSounds and what we’re trying to do, that just creates a wonderful amount of work that we’re struggling to try to do,” she said. “Which is good.”

The full lineup includes Tank and the Bangas, JoJo Hermann, Susto, 12Eleven, Aden Paul & the Silver Spades, Alfred Banks, Babe Club, Bankhead Boys, Blackwater Brass Band, Bit Brigade, Dinny Skip, Disco Lemonade, D.R.E.A.D., Equal Creatures, Goodwin Rainer, Humidity Freak, Jesse Cotton Stone, Kat Deal, LeTrainiump, McKinley Dixon, Monk Tunnel, Mummy Cats, Nanafalia, Phil J, Rufus McBlack, Saint Social, Saxkixave, Shaheed & DJ Supreme, Steve Kelly, Symone French & The Trouille Troupe, The Sh-Booms, Tim OG, Trash Panda, Valleyfire, Yeah Probably, Zach Edwards & The Medicine. Kick-off parties will feature Matthew Logan Vasquez, The Coursing, Empty Hands, Knives, Kill the Imposter, Resistor and Son of a Gun.

A four-day pass is $65. Single-day passes are $40. Four-day VIP passes are sold out. Tickets can be ordered at http://southsoundsmusicfest.com/.

For the full performance schedule, visit http://southsoundsmusicfest.com/ or https://www.facebook.com/SouthSoundsMusicFest.

Mathews and Johnson said they hope the festival will have multiple benefits for participants. Among other things, it can help new acts get a toehold in the Mobile market, opening the way for them to include Mobile in future tours. That helps raise the city’s profile as a whole within the industry.

For fans, Mathews said, it’s a bargain.

“From last year to this year has been a massive step,” he said. “Truly, a $65 ticket is the cheapest ticket you could find for a festival with this kind of lineup.”

“Our platform is singular,” said Harjung. “There’s nothing else like us anywhere around.”