FREEPORT — Get your lawn chairs ready.
L.L.Bean announced its free summer concert series lineup on Tuesday.
The shows kickoff July 4 with Devon Gilfillian, a singer-song writer who lives in Nashville and released his first album last year, and wraps Sept. 1 with The Fray, a Grammy-nominated and Billboard Music Awards-winning rock band out of Denver.
Included in between, a little folk (Passenger), country (Chase Rice), string band (Old Crow Medicine Show) and blues rock (Big Head Todd and the Monsters).
L.L.Bean’s concert series started back in 1998 and in 20 years, the store’s put on 180 shows at 95 Main St., spokesman Eric C. Smith said.
Most of the concerts average 1,000 people, though, “for the big shows, the average show draw is about 6,000,” he said.
The biggest concert on record: Indigo Girls with close to 9,000 people.
Blues Traveler, America, Don McLean, Daryl Hall and a few others have also been up there, according to Smith.
Itching to stake out the best spot? Concertgoers can set their chairs out at 6 a.m. the day of the show, with the exception this year of the Chase Rice performance. (He prefers fans be up on their feet.)
It’s first-come, first-served for spots, and an honor system not to move others’ chairs.
There’s a friendly, backyard concert experience to the shows that Smith thinks contributes to the draw.
A few years back, banjo player Dan Zanes’ crew accidentally broke his banjo while setting up. He didn’t travel with a spare.
So someone got on the microphone before the concert to ask: Did anyone have a banjo?
“Someone raised their hand, ‘Well, I have to go home and get it . . .'” Smith said.
After a slight delay, Zanes took the stage with the borrowed banjo.
“It’s a whole community feeling,” Smith said. “I think that’s why it’s so popular.”
kskelton@sunjournal.com
(L.L. Bean handout)
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