Savoring an experience. Country singer Luke Bryan didn’t wear a cowboy hat, but Stetson-themed hats were everywhere. And for sale. And Luke Bryan T-shirts too. And sodas. None for $2.99, though. Images: Jake Hunter and Cash Wiesner
Premium $239 tickets bought up-front views
EYOTA, Minn.—“Thank you,” Luke Bryan,” says Mayor Tony Nelson. “You’ve put Eyota on the map.” The Bryan concert, the sixth stop on his 2022 Farm Tour, drew a sell-out 20,000 fans. Mayor Nelson said that local merchants were thrilled. In a town of 2,183, according to the 2020 census, that meant the Kwik Trip convenience store and gas station, Buddy’s Liquor Store, the Blue Collar Café and the Greendoor Bar. The real action, though, was south of town at the Gar-Lin dairy farm where an estimated 5,000 vehicles squeezed into a mowed-down field from which fans trekked as much as a mile to a concert stage that had been bolted together the day before. With warm-up and back-up music from Riley Green, Jameson Rodgers, Peach Pickers, and DJ Rock, the spotlight was on Bryan in faded jeans that had never seen a drop of starch and a baggy, untucked shirt. No, he wore no cowboy hat but a sweat-stained baseball cap with an offbeat but a little defiant Prince of Bel Air flair. The crowd loved it. Good news: Heavy sodden clouds held back their precip. It all lasted past twilight when everybody queued up, headlights on, for what seemed an endless parade of vehicles — yes, lots of pickup — out of Eyota. The next morning every port-a-potty vendors in four counties arrived to load their relief stations on flatbeds and return to their home stations for bleaching. As for Bryan, he headed home to Leesburg, Georgia, to rest up for another roadtrip – his Raised Up Right tour, beginning October 6 in Southhaven Mississippi.
Behind the green door. Pre-concert and post-concert fun at Eyota’s Greendoor bar.