Concert For Carolina draws record crowd

CHURCH IN SESSION: Country artist Eric Church performs at the Concert For Carolina, Saturday’s hurricane relief show that ran well past midnight at Bank of America Stadium, due to a storm that rolled through prior to the event. (Getty Images)

Event raises about $25M for Helene relief

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina — Concert For Carolina, last Saturday’s massive benefit to raise funds for Hurricane Helene victims, drew 82,193 attendees, a record for all events at the 28-year-old facility.

The concert, born out of a brainstorm by country superstar Luke Combs, raised an impressive $24.5 million in charitable funds. It’s all going to help western North Carolina residents get back on their feet and rebuild mountain communities devastated by the Sept. 27 tropical storm that killed about 100 people in the state, according to updated reports one month after the destruction took place.

The event was driven in part by the efforts of Tepper Sports and Entertainment, which owns Bank of America Stadium, the Carolina Panthers and Charlotte FC.

The revenue number covers all sales tied to ticketing, concessions, event merchandise, preferred parking, live streaming revenue and sponsorships, plus proceeds from an online auction of music and sports items.

Concert For Carolina was heavy on acoustic sets by Eric Church, another North Carolina native, plus James Taylor, Billy Strings, the Avett Brothers, Sheryl Crow, Keith Urban, Scotty McCreery, Chase Rice, Parmalee and Bailey Zimmerman.

The low-key production element was appropriate, considering the somber tone behind the event, which created a sense of intimacy, considering the stadium setting and the the record crowd.

The event’s corporate partners extended to both Live Nation and AEG Presents, a noteworthy distinction. Bringing the world’s two biggest concert promoters on board for a single event, a rarity in the industry, showed the spirit of cooperation and empathy as a whole for a purple state playing a critical role in the upcoming presidential election.

Notably, event organizers kept ticket fees to a minimum in keeping with the spirit of the occasion. Club seats, for example, priced at $150 in the southeast corner of lower bowl, carried a $3 convenience fee and $10 sales tax.

Those in attendance over the nine-hour event were treated to a midfield production featuring a rotating stage contained in a square-shaped structural grid and flanked with four videoboards above the performance space.

Concert Stuff Group, a Mocksville, North Carolina company whose subsidiaries include G2 Structures, a manufacturer of portable stages for stadium tours, provided most of the production equipment for the event.

“Being a local company, it was important for (us) to get fully involved with the effort to raise money for this cause and we were able to come together with all the teams involved to do so,” said John Oot, Concert Stuff Group’s chief marketing officer. “With Luke and Eric being long term clients of ours, (CFO) Michael Brammer was one of the first calls Luke made and we did not hesitate.”

The production extended to plastic wristbands, branded for Chief Cares, Church’s hurricane relief fund and equipped with LED lights that were distributed at the gate to be worn by all concertgoers. When activated as part of the concert presentation, the wristbands, made by PixMob, whose clients include the NFL, NBA, the 2024 Paris Olympics and Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour,” bathed the seating bowl in white lights during key stretches of the show.

As with other benefit concerts, there were a few celebrity sightings.

Actress Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban’s wife, joined him on stage for a few minutes to wish him happy birthday, prompting Church to perform the Happy Birthday song for one of his country music heroes. In addition, Country Music Hall of Fame member Randy Travis, who grew up in Marshville, North Carolina, situated 35 miles southeast of Charlotte, made an appearance in support of his fellow North Carolinians.

It all started with a 90-minute weather delay shortly before the show was scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m., which emptied the stadium bowl, leaving thousands crowding the concourses and clubs until the all-clear was given to return to their seats.

They didn’t seem to mind. The impromptu intermission helped drive food and drink per caps with folks chowing down on Bojangles fried chicken, which is North Carolina’s homegrown fast food chain, plus Dale’s Pale Ale and Sierra Nevada’s Hazy Little Thing, produced by breweries in Brevard and Mills River, North Carolina.

Levy, the stadium concessionaire, got into the act, creating four themed cocktails for the event: the Carolina Mule, Western NC Paloma, Mountain Top Margarita and Asheville Strong. Drink prices ran from $9.49 for bottomless soda and $12.49 for cans of domestic beer, to $27.49 for a double cocktail.

Parking fees ran from $20 at an uptown garage to $60 at a gravel lot along Morehead Street, a few blocks south of the stadium, which is on par for Panthers home games.

Before the concert, thousands of early arrivals stood in epic lines that stretched a few blocks from the stadium waiting for the gates to open at 4 p.m., a strong indication of the high anticipation among live music fans for the one-off event.

The lines moved quickly to enter the venue, thanks to frictionless screening technology in place. Early birds gained quick access to the primary merchandise tent outside the stadium, snatching up $40 event-specific T-shirts and $70 hoodies. The weather delay also boosted merch sales on the club level, with a line snaking through the Red Zone Lounge.

Interestingly, the official T-shirts were priced the same as those items hawked by bootleggers roaming the parking lots and stadium perimeter, unfairly capitalizing on the benefit show and withholding revenue from the relief effort.

Customers noted the pointy mountain tops depicted on the official Concert For Carolina merchandise logo didn’t match the smoothness of the Blue Ridge mountain terrain, but considering the quick turnaround for event retail, all are forgiven.

Church kicked off the live music, playing “Hallelujah,” a Leonard Cohen composition, before yielding to jam grass sensation Billy Strings, whose four-piece group wowed the crowd with a nine-song set, accentuated by “Black Mountain Rag,” their tribute to bluegrass pioneer Doc Watson, a western North Carolina native whose statue in downtown Boone observing raging flood waters was captured in an Instagram photo that went viral, serving as a lasting image of the storm’s carnage.

For a crowd of predominantly country music enthusiasts, it was their first exposure to Billy Strings, whose new album, Highway Prayers, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top Album Sales chart this month. While some scrolled on their mobile phones, inattentive during the Strings set, others glowed about the foursome’s talent afterward, mentioning that they planned to dig deeper into the group’s catalog.

Church returned to the stage and was joined by Crow for a duet of “Picture,” replacing Kid Rock, who originally shared the spotlight with the songstress on the 20-year-old tune. Church then launched into an extended medley of covers that ran the gamut from Otis Redding, Def Leppard, Bob Seger and The Temptations, to Van Morrison, Neil Diamond, Waylon Jennings and Billy Joel, bookended by Church’s own “Mistress Named Music.”

The insertion of elder statesman James Taylor into the mix, supported by his son Henry Taylor on vocals and a few others, provided one of the night’s most poignant moments. Taylor’s ties to the Tar Heel State date to his father, Isaac Taylor, dean of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine from 1964-71. James Taylor, sporting a wide-brimmed Stetson hat, played seven songs, including the obligatory “Carolina In My Mind,” which had the crowd singing along in unison.

The Carolina-in-title song theme ran throughout the course of the night with Church, Rice, McCreery, Parmalee all falling in line with heartfelt tributes to the state.

Shortly after 1 a.m., Church and Combs finished the night with Church’s version of “Carolina,” originally released in 2009. They were joined by Rice, Parmalee, McCreery, Zimmerman and Avett Brothers, from Concord, North Carolina.

All told, it was a night to remember for those supporting North Carolina as the effort continues to reconstruct the state’s western portion, a rebuild that extends to live music venues and industry workers that became unemployed and lost their homes due to the storm.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated.