Country music will travel north for a three-day music festival in Delaware this summer.
Live Nation has partnered with Dewey Beach, Del.-based Highway One to present a three-day country music festival in August at the Delaware State Fairgrounds in Harrington.
Brian O'Connell, Live Nation's president of country music touring, and Highway One president Alex Pires recently held a press conference at the fairgrounds to announce the event, which is scheduled for Aug.14-16, 2015.
“Live Nation will handle the festival side, and we are handling the grounds,” said Danny Aguilar, assistant general manager and marketing director of the Delaware State Fair. “The details are currently being worked on.”
Though it’s ranked 49th in size of all the U.S. states, this will be Delaware’s second music festival. The Firefly Music Festival, which debuted in 2012, takes place in June at the Dover Downs complex.
Although the Southern states are known as the home for country music, this genre’s popularity has been quickly expanding to include the rest of the country. Live Nation has created several large country music festivals outside of the South, including Faster Horses in Michigan, Farmborough in New York City and Watershed in Washington. The company recently expanded these events to Las Vegas, holding the first Route 91 Harvest festival in Sin City Oct. 3-5. Performers included Jason Aldean, Miranda Lambert, Blake Shelton, Dierks Bentley, Brantley Gilbert, Tyler Farr and Dwight Yoakam, among others.
For the past 25 years, Highway One has been operating music venues in Dewey Beach and Newark, Del., including the Bottle & Cork, The Rudder and the now shuttered Stone Balloon. More than 100 up-and-coming musical acts have played at these nightclubs, including country music superstars Jason Aldean, Miranda Lambert, Eric Church and Lady Antebellum.
“Delaware’s fairgrounds already put on three big country concerts a year, so we know how big the market is,” Pires said. “Anyone big has played there at one time or another over the last 15 years, which means agents and talent are comfortable with the area.”
The biggest challenge for the team was finding a large piece of land that had access to a major highway and the necessary infrastructure to accommodate this type of event.
Like the Firefly Fest, the Delaware Country Music fest’s location is right off a major highway.
The event will be held at Harrington Park in the southern section of the fairgrounds to allow for camping and space for at least two stages. The fairgrounds’150 acres of parking will be utilized, along with two neighboring farms that total 100 acres.
“The fairgrounds are centrally located from Baltimore and Philly,” Aguilar said. “Plus, we have the infrastructure to bring folks in, and our staff is very familiar with handling large crowds and working with safety officials to make sure we put on a safe event.”
Prior to partnering with Live Nation, Pires did his research, attending several of the country's top festivals over the past two years. He originally planned to hold the festival on 500 acres of a 1,000-acre farm in Delaware’s rural Sussex County, which is located in the southern part of the state on the Delmarva Peninsula.
Due to complaints by the site’s neighbors, the application was rejected.
Because the location at Delaware’s fairgrounds is central to a number of states in the Northeast, Pires anticipates attracting 20,000 people to the event.
Live Nation is currently creating the talent lineup, which will be announced when the fairgrounds’ camp sites have been marked off and approved.
“We first need to get site approval, so when people go online to get their tickets, they can also reserve a camping spot," Pires said.
Interviewed for this article: Danny Aguilar, (302)398-5903; Alex Pires, (202) 905-6706