Lancaster Festival Executive Director deems event a success despite Lady A pulling out

LANCASTER — Despite country act Lady A's last-minute cancellation, Lancaster Festival Executive Director Deb Connell deemed the event a success.

"The festival all the way around turned out great," she said. "We had beautiful weather. There's really not anything to complain about from our point of view. I think everything went well. Attendance was great and people seemed happy. The music was wonderful. It's turned out to be a very happy festival for us."

Lady A was supposed to end the festival at Ohio University's Wendel Concert Stage on July 30, but cancelled for unknown reasons. Fellow country artist Billy Currington played instead and drew about 12,000 people.

"He was definitely a popular act," Connell said. "A lot of people reached out and wanted to buy tickets after after the announcement that there was a switch that had to be made. So we were happy about that and he put on a great show. All things considered with the challenges that we faced this year, everything just came together beautifully."

Rick Springfield drew about 5,000 on July 23 and Elton John tribute act Elton Rohn drew about the same. The COVID-19 pandemic forced Ron Camilleri in 2020 and 2021 to cancel before making it this year.

"He loved being here," Connell said. "He was very energetic and very involved. We feel like he's now a cousin of the festival since we've been talking to him at least monthly since 2019. I sort of feel like I should invite him down for Thanksgiving dinner. We've built a relationship now since we've work on this for so long. It was nice to see it finally all come together."

While the Springfield concert attendance was considerably less than Currington's, Connell said that is about normal for the first Saturday festival concert each year.

The Beach Boys set the festival attendance record of around 15,000 in 2011.

While the national acts each may get the most attention, there are a multitude of other events and activities throughout the county each year during the festival. That includes the Lancaster Festival Orchestra opening night concert at St. Mary of the Assumption Roman Catholic Church. Because of the pandemic and a renovation of the church, this was the first time since 2018 for that event.

"It's been a long time coming, but it's definitely a concert that was worth it," Connell said.

This year's festival featured the debut of a community lunch downtown on July 30.

"It was wonderful," Connell said. "We had more people show up than were expected. The community band played first and then we had The Nostalgics (Big Band) provide music for the brunch. We just thought that Saturday morning was the last opportunity for people who come into town for the festival to get together with friends or family they haven't had the chance to see yet. So that is definitely a new festival tradition that we will continue."

Connell said she and the festival board are always working to improve the event. But she said there's nothing she was overly disappointed with this year.

"It was a long stretch to get a full festival pulled back together," she said. "I'm really happy with all of our volunteers. We had new volunteers that came out in droves, which is great. And the more experienced volunteers were able to come back and we were so happy to see them. I just want to give a special thanks to all of our volunteers because without them this festival does not happen."

Lori Bowen is probably not complaining either as she won a 2022 Kia Telluride in the festival raffle.

"She's a Lancaster resident and she's thrilled to pieces to be getting the car," Connell said.

jbarron@gannett.com

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Twitter: @JeffDBarron

This article originally appeared on Lancaster Eagle-Gazette: Festival director deems event a success despite Lady A pulling out