Summertime by George Begins 10th Season Wednesday Evening

(KNSI) – Summertime by George kicks off a decade of entertainment and community support in St. Cloud on Wednesday.

According to summertime by George Entertainment Chair Troy Fritz, the free summer concert series on the shores of Lake George at Eastman Park is on pace to have its one-millionth concert goer this year.

“Right now we’re sitting just shy of 900,000 people, that have been down to summertime by George over the nine years. But this year, if we have a good season, we could hit that million person mark.”

Fritz was a guest of KNSI’s Bob Hughes.

Radio Nation will warm up the crowd starting at 5 p.m., followed by headliner Justin Ploof and The Throwbacks at 6:30 p.m.

St. Cloud’s Rotary Club puts on Summertime by George. Fritz says the idea for the concert series started after the rotary club helped with extensive renovations around Lake George between 2005 and 2009.

He says Rotarians Dave Trip and Mark Christiansen started asking the question, what if they built this park and nobody uses it? Will it have been a waste of time and money?

“And so, we started looking at different little concert series, saying let’s try to attract 1000 people a night and do a weekly free concert series. And that kind of started on a napkin at a bar and it just kind of started evolving. I remember the very first night there was probably 100 people there.”

He says the show now attracts between 7,000 and 10,000 people and some concerts get nearly 20,000 spectators.

He says this year’s lineup includes many fan favorites like The Fabulous Armadillos, Killer Vees, GB Leighton, Collective Unconscious, Michael Shynes, The Johnny Holm Band, and more.

“So it’s it’s going to be just a fantastic season of high energy. Absolutely incredible quality musicians, entertainers. And this is kind of the season to just say, this is what it’s all about. I hope people come down because every one of these shows is an over the top show. And it’s they’ve been ones that throughout the years, people just tell us bring that one back, bring that one back. And so we put them all together into one season.”

Summertime by George was canceled last year because of the pandemic, moving the tenth anniversary season to this year.

Click here to get more information on this year’s lineup and what else is happening at Summertime by Geroge.

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