Aaron Franklin attended his first concert at the Allen County Fair when he was about 12 years old in 1995. He watched in awe as rising country music star Wade Hayes, wearing a white cowboy hat and a 90s mullet, took the stage to sing his No. 1 hit, Old Enough to Know Better.
Immediately after the show, Franklin bought a white baseball cap with a suede bill and stood in a long line to ask Hayes to autograph his hat.
He still has that hat, kept safe in his grandmothers closet. He plans to dig it out and ask Hayes to sign it again Saturday when the musician returns to Iola for the inaugural Farm City Days Summer Concert Series, along with the band Ricochet and headlining act Frankie Ballard.
But this time, Franklin will be watching the show as one of the lead organizers for the event.
That has always been a dear memory for me. So I hope we can keep something like that going for the kids here, Franklin said.
THE SUMMER Concert Series kicks off at 7 p.m. Saturday at 520 W. Scott Street, also known as the Davis Athletic Fields or soccer fields. A special VIP experience with a pre-party and dinner will be served to those with special VIP tickets. Doors open at 4 p.m. at Millers on Madison, right next to the concert venue, and dinner is served at 5 p.m.
Seating is not provided, so bring chairs.
Parking will be in Riverside Park, with handicapped parking at Tramec at 30 W. David St. and VIP parking near Millers on Madison. Volunteers with the Iola Masonic Lodge will help with parking; no fee is charged but donations are accepted to help the Masons with their projects. Attendees can walk or ride a trolley from the park to the concert area.
PLANS FOR the concert began in 2015, when new leadership took over the Farm City Days committee. Virginia Macha, president of the nonprofit organization, and Aaron Franklin, secretary/treasurer, said they wanted to expand Farm City Days to grow the local economy and provide more options for family entertainment. The annual event in October is Allen Countys largest festival; informal surveys of local businesses found its their busiest retail day of the year, with some places reporting double the usual amount of sales.
Organizers looked at concerts and festivals around the region and the state for ideas. Events like Cornstock in Garnett, the Paola Roots Festival, Country Stampede in Manhattan and the state fair in Hutchinson typically bring thousands of people to those communities.
We looked at the Corn-stock model and what it does for Garnett, Macha said. And we wanted to set the bar a little higher for what Farm City Days means for Iola.
They also remembered the success Allen County had with its concerts at the fair in the 1990s, when artists like John Michael Montgomery, Faith Hill and Kenny Chesney performed right before their careers took off.
Starting in 2015, Farm City Days, now in its 47th year, began to offer more musical acts to sort of test the waters for a bigger concert, Franklin said. Organizers brought in rock-and-roll acts, as well as blues, bluegrass and country music. They quickly realized people in the area preferred country music and began plans for a country music concert.
They also realized that an outdoor concert in October, to coincide with Farm City Days, just wouldnt work. The weather is too unpredictable. And with Garnetts concert in September and Paolas in August, they needed to schedule something for July.
At least in July, they reasoned, the weather is about as predictable as you can get in Kansas predictably hot. Forecasts call for sunny skies and temperatures to reache 96 degrees Saturday, with a very slight chance of rain.
