There was a lot of singing about beer, cheating wives, and pickup trucks, but, no one was singing about the lightning and torrential rain that was coming to the CMT Music Fest held at Bingemans in Kitchener on Friday night. The 20th CMT was filling up slowly Friday afternoon as the concert goers were arriving by numerous shuttle buses. The crowd were anticipating a great night of country music at this wonderful festival.
CMT was in full swing with performances by Brothers Osborne, Meghan Patrick, Andrew Hyatt, Ben Hudson, and James Barker Band. Brothers Osborne put on a great show with singer TJ Osborne opening the set with a mega-phone in hand and his older brother John, the shredding guitarist beside him performing songs like ‘Rum’, ‘It Ain’t My Fault’, and ‘Stay A Little Longer’. Ben Hudson performed on the smaller stage, he is a really great guy and great performer. The female fans really seemed to like everything Hudson did on stage with his voice, guitar, and his looks. Meghan Patrick hit the main stage and performed a few songs from her latest album ‘Grace & Grit’ and of course her big song ‘Bow Chicka Wow Wow’.
As the clock got close to 7:20pm, the music was stopped and a sudden announcement was made to temporarily evacuate the venue, it didn’t make sense to people not noticing the menacing clouds creeping up behind the stage. The whole place stopped and began asking if they heard that correctly? Leave the venue? The announcer then said “We all know whats happened in the past with wind, rain, and lightning, please leave the venue.” By now I knew it was over, especially after the stage collapse at the Indiana State Fair and stage collapse in Ottawa. Some people began moving towards the exits, others stayed in the massive beer and food lineups, almost in disbelief and a “screw you, i’m not leaving” attitude. The security began asking people to leave the venue and go stand upon a hill, on the sidewalk area, outside the property lines. Security began turning off power to the vendors lights and food stalls. The panic on the vendors faces was evident as the thought of all the food bought for this day, was now at risk of waste. It was sad as some begged to stay open as thousands of dollars of cooked food was now being evacuated with hundreds of people not wanting to leave the line or the venue.
I made it to the exit and top of the big hill and the safety of the trees and lightning strikes and onto an open hill surrounded my media antennas. Hundreds of people were showing up expecting a party and some country music. The look of disappointment on thousands of faces was hard to miss and questions of “what do we do now” was heard everywhere. The number one question was, “how do we get refunded for the food and booze tickets that were prepaid and sitting in a CMT bank account?”
Hopefully the Saturday weather can help make up for such a disappointing day for a lot of concert goers and the show will go on as scheduled. Saturday’s lineup includes the Road Hammers, Cold Creek County, Tom Cochrane & Red Rider, and finishing the festival the Zac Brown Band.
