Honk if you love music
Mike Eli, lead singer of the Eli Young Band, strummed his guitar onstage and gazed into the crowd on a warm Texas evening in June. “How many of you out there are dreamers?” he asked.
He was answered by an explosion of car horns. “Whatever it is that you dream about,” he said, “keep on believing.”
This was not how the country band envisioned its 2020 touring experience. As the musicians started singing their Grammy-nominated hit Even If It Breaks Your Heart, a stirring anthem about following your dreams, they looked out on a parking lot filled with people in their cars as they tuned into the show via an FM radio station, just like a drive-in movie.
Summer tour season is upon us, and most people are starting to begrudgingly accept that, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, largescale concerts won’t resume for a long time. The music industry has been forced to get creative — and besides artists hopping online for a live stream, the most popular choice for a musical performance might be drive-in concerts.
It makes a lot of sense in the era of social distancing.
As such acts as Keith Urban and Los Lobos embark on drivein shows, each setup is different: Some are in fields, others are on farms. On June 27, Garth Brooks will perform a concert broadcast to 300 drive-in movie theatre screens. The Eli Young Band show, part of the Concert In Your Car series took place in a parking lot outside Globe Life Field in Arlington.
The idea started in March, as soon as Triple 8 Management co-owner George Couri realized concerts would be shut down. Couri represents several acts from Texas, so he contacted Texas Rangers entertainment executive Sean Decker. After eight weeks of mapping out logistics, they pulled together a plan that follows county and state guidelines, as well as the CDC safety protocols.
Each show could be only an hour long. Acoustic sets only, to minimize the number of crew members. Fans had to stay in their vehicles, spaced a safe distance apart. (The parking lot can hold about 1,000 cars, but only 400 would be allowed.) Staff would wear personal protective equipment. No food or drinks sold. Tickets would be scanned through car windows.
“We spent so long thinking about how to make it great … but the biggest variable going in was the thing we couldn’t directly control: Would people keep to their vehicles and stay safe? Or would they run up to the stage?” Couri said.
From what he saw, people respected the rules — and many seemed thrilled just to be out of the house.
Kacie Miller goes to lots of country music concerts, including the Eli Young Band show. She acknowledged the “drive-in” situation lost some of the concert ambience: Sometimes it was hard to see the stage, and you couldn’t sing along with the crowd. “All in all, in the time we’re living in, it’s probably the best thing we can do to have live music still,” she said. “It’s better than watching something on a computer — or not at all.”
The Washington Post