By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The Sounds of Summer concert series has brought people to downtown St. Joseph for the past 20 years.
The biggest part of making any concert series so popular for so long is the audience. David Peppard of the Downtown Association Board believes they have built that audience through the years.
"I think we've grown an audience, we have a lot of regulars who make it down there most every week to hear the bands, be a part of the downtown" Peppard says. "They'll walk around, see our businesses, go eat before or after at one of the restaurants and take advantage of what we have downtown that makes us so excited about we have there."
Sounds of Summer has operated in downtown St. Joseph for the last two decades, and has mainly focused on the same genres of music.
"I'd say mainly it's classic rock and we're starting to hit on the 80's classics as well," says Christy George with the Downtown Association Board.
Peppard says a big reason the audience keeps coming back is the genre of music the bands play.
"We've tried to experiment a little bit with different types of bands," Peppard explains. "And again, having that kind of steady audience, you know, you bring somebody out that's playing a bunch of music that an audience doesn't really know it doesn't always go over so well. We've had always kind of a country rock aspect to it."
Sounds of Summer even had some success last year, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. George says there was some success, but not surprisingly, there was also a slight drop in the audience retention.
"I'd say it was probably about half of what it was," George explains. "The audience kind of shifted every week. It was different people all the time, but everybody did a really good job of staying six feet apart and keeping safe."
The concert series will kick off Friday with the Blue Oyster Culture Club (or B.O.C.C) and will run on Fridays through July 30.
You can find more information, including a schedule of performers HERE
Video provided by the St. Joseph Downtown Association.