Hard Rock Rockfest organizers on Thursday announced plans to launch a tour series around the Rockfest brand, starting with a six-city alternative venue run beginning in late June. The inaugural tour will showcase Smashmouth and Marvelous 3 and is expected to sidestep much of the controversy heaped upon the day-long Rockfest event in Atlanta.

The concert series, with five dates initially set and more being planned, will play a few established outdoor venues, but will focus on parking lots and parks. Tickets for the shows will be $15, according to producer Warner / TBA.

In written statements, Hard Rock and Warner / TBA spokespeople said that the tour series is aimed at promoting the next all-day Rockfest festival by raising the profile of the Rockfest name in various part of the country and boosting anticipation for next year's festival.

The Rockfest festival has received considerable attention in the past week as church groups in Atlanta put forth a unified effort to seek the cancellation of the event, based largely upon concerns over lyrics sung by a number of acts on the June 5th bill.

A May 24th press conference in Griffin, GA, cited Rockfest acts the Offspring, Silverchair and Better Than Ezra as purveyors of violent imagey and as potential catalysts of youth violence. Many church and government groups across the country have focused on music, video games and movies as potential contributors to the violent episodes that have played out at high schools in recent years, particularly the shooting incidents near Denver and Atlanta in recent weeks.

Rockfest organizers responded that they would ask acts not to perform songs with questionable lyrics and would ask performers to speak out against violence in their sets.

While Better Than Ezra was named by Atlanta church groups as one of the acts portraying violence in their music, the band notes that the imagery is part of their ongoing campaign against handgun violence. The band has a continuing relationship with the PAX organization, a national handgun awareness group, and has tagged the cover of their latest release How Does Your Garden Grow? with the words ''Stop Handgun Violence.''

New acts Citizen King and Taxiride have been added to the all-day festival lineup. The New Radicals recently pulled out of the festival citing an illness in the band.

Additional Rockfest tour series dates are expected to be announced in coming weeks.