[check out the original story at KenoshaNews.com for photos, including Tim McGraw!]
BY DENEEN SMITH
dsmith@kenoshanews.com
RANDALL — For 361 days of the year, Brent Zaagman and Arian Landheer live in Lyndon, Ill., population 566.
The other four days, they move someplace a little more populous — the raucous campgrounds at Country Thunder.
Zaagman and Landheer, both farmers by trade, were hanging out under the awning outside the Thunderbus, a former school bus, now painted green. The campground was beginning to empty out Saturday evening in advance of headliner Tim McGraw, who was closing out the four-day festival.
They would be headed out soon themselves, but for the moment were content to chat in the shadow of the bus.
“We picked it up for $800. Gave it a paint job, fixed up the inside a bit,” Landheer said. “This is its only outing every year.”
Some folks sleep up on the roof, some inside. “And some of us sleep underneath,” Landheer said, pointing to his own sleeping bag with a view of the rear axle.
The two, who farm neighboring tracts of land near their hometown, have been coming to Country Thunder every year for the past eight. Since they’re only 25 and 26 years old, they’ve spent a fair bit of their formative years at the festival.
“It’s country music; it’s the whole atmosphere,” Zaagman said of the draw. This year, the two said, they found the atmosphere a little more convivial. They said the festival’s security forces had been friendly but out in force, and that there appeared to be fewer problems with the crowd.
“It’s been really laid back,” Zaagman said. “It’s been, ‘Let’s have fun, but let’s not get out of control.’”
The festival has new owners this year, with the new management cutting back the main stage entertainment from four days to three. They also cut back on the number of vendors on the site, boosted security, and shifted the concert times for headliners to slightly earlier times.
Jeremy Westby, who handled public relations for the festival, said the organizers sold more tickets this year than they had projected.
He said the event had its biggest crowd on Thursday for headliner Taylor Swift, with about 12,900 people in attendance. On Friday there was a crowd of about 10,000. Saturday’s numbers were unavailable, but Westby projected them to reach close to Thursday’s ticket sales.
Westby said the event had tough competition this year, with SummerFest in Milwaukee, and competing country music concerts in the area by popular artists like Rascal Flatts.
Next year, Westby said, organizers plan to push the festival back by a week, and hope to run the event Thursday through Sunday.
“It seems like the crowd is down a little bit,” said Lt. Paul Falduto of the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department. “The campgrounds aren’t quite as full as they have been been. The traffic coming in hasn’t been as heavy.”
The sheriff’s department has between 20 and 30 deputies patrolling the festival, organizers reimbursing the county for their time. Falduto said there have been fewer problems this year than in the past, with few fights and little serious crime beyond a rash of burglaries in the campgrounds. The thieves focused largely on beer.
If attendance was down, vendor Beverly Hills — she swears that is her real name — said it hasn’t affected sales.
Hills has sold western hats from a trailer at the event each year for the past 12. She credits the new management with a better organized event, a more contented crowd and customers who were looking to go shopping.
“This was the best year I’ve had in 12 years,” she said.
