Rock north, country south: Delaware's musical Mason-Dixon Line
Ryan CormierHow hot is country music in Delaware right now?
Well, it probably depends where you live in relation to the state's musical Mason-Dixon Line.
Just take a look at this summer's pop country lineup at the beach, where the genre has been (surprisingly) dominating for several years now.
Dewey Beach's Bottle & Cork and Hudson Fields near Milton are on pace to score seven sell-outs this summer, six of which are country acts.
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The team behind both venues — Highway One Group — partnered up with Hudson Fields to create a 4,000-person venue this summer because the up-and-coming country acts that have played the Cork in the past regularly outgrow its 1,100-person capacity.
And to really show their commitment to country, Highway One's Alex Pires told The News Journal he's prepared to do what was once unthinkable — change the Cork's 28-year-old slogan, "The greatest rock 'n' roll bar in the world."
Combined with a steady stream of country shows at Dover clubs such as Cowboy Up and Tom's Bullpen, the country boom continues to roll in Kent and Sussex counties. It peaked in the summer of 2015 when a pair of major country music festivals (Big Barrel in Dover and Delaware Junction in Harrington) had brief, but spirited, runs.
But when you take a look upstate, country singer Cole Swindell's "Flatliner" might as well be the theme song when it comes to modern country.
Just ask Stephen Bailey, managing director of programming for Wilmington's biggest theaters, The Grand and The Playhouse on Rodney Square, about his "latest horror story."
The lone country radio act that was on the books for The Grand and The Playhouse this summer, Jerrod Niemann, saw his July 6 Playhouse show scrapped due to soft ticket sales. The date has not been rescheduled.
Even though Willie Nelson still holds The Grand's record for quickest sell-out in its history, beating buzzed-about rock shows by The White Stripes and Wilco, success with modern country has eluded just about every major venue in the state's biggest city.
Rock generally rules music venues and smaller clubs in New Castle County. And when it comes to Wilmington, heads usually turn (and not in a good way) if a pop country radio hit sneaks onto the jukebox.
Even so, people like Bailey know there's a market for country music in New Castle County. Just look at all the fans who travel to Philadelphia for big-name shows by acts such as Kenny Chesney, Luke Bryan and Garth Brooks.
"I think it's a pot of gold, but it's been a pot of garbage the couple of times we've stepped out and had something," says Bailey, who has been booking The Grand for 17 years. "We believe there is a goldmine out there and it's not defined by the [Chesapeake & Delaware Canal]. I think we'll take another stab at it."
Beach goes country
With popular country music straying further from the genre's original sound, incorporating elements of rock, pop, hip-hop and dance music, it can't be waved off as a passing trend as some tried to do during country's past streaks of popularity.
You're just as likely to see teens and 20-somethings at pop country shows as their parents or grandparents. The fan-friendly genre hits 'em all.
"Back in the '90s, country was accepted by a lot of people, but they thought it was a fad," says Sky Phillips, co-host of the morning show for Wilmington-based iHeartMedia country station 94.7-FM WDSD, which reaches from South Philadelphia to Ocean City, Maryland, thanks to a tower located in Dover.
"Country music today is like '80s Top 40. You can put several things in the soup pot and it all tastes great," he adds. "Boosts in country music usually come in 10-year cycles and we're smack dab in the middle of another great country rave."
While country's popularity in the more rural southern counties of the state is nothing new — just look at the genre's long-time dominance at the Delaware State Fair's grandstand stage — it's the boom at the beach has been striking.
Pires, a partner with Highway One, which owns the Cork and created Delaware Junction in a partnership with Live Nation, is all in on catching the country wave at the beach.
Look no further than his decision to do what was unthinkable just 11 years ago when his booking agent Vikki Walls took over scheduling at the Cork: changing the iconic brand of the 81-year-old club.
It wasn't really a tough decision to tweak the "greatest" phrase written under the club's silhouetted logo of a couple dancing. Country is now a permanent part of the Cork's identity.
And it fits.
Before country, the Cork was almost totally dominated by cover bands with national acts getting some shows here and there.
Pires' formula was simple. He broke it down for The News Journal in 2003: Cover bands go well with drinking. And women particularly like cover acts because they know the words to the songs and can dance. And, "The guys go where the girls are," Pires said at the time.
With the country shows that now fill the Cork, about 60 percent of the crowd is female.
"The stars are males and the audience are females. They'll accept pretty much anything that guy walks out on stage with whether it's just an acoustic guitar or a full band," Pires says. "It's as popular as anything I've seen in my 29th year of doing this."
Other than summertime shows at the Delaware State Fair, country fan Julie Short of Laurel used to drive to Columbia, Maryland, or Virginia Beach, Virginia, to see her favorite acts.
That's no longer the case. She made her first trip to the Bottle & Cork this summer to see Jake Owen and promises that she'll be back.
"When they started having acts like that around here, I was like, 'Yes! Yes! Yes!'," says Short, 46. "It's not a far drive and I can get up and go to work the next morning."
When Walls took over booking at the Cork, country was one of her original targets: "I couldn't believe no one was really doing country music here. We took a chance and it worked better than I could have anticipated."
While the Delaware State Fair offered — and still offers — a country-heavy lineup, smaller clubs were not getting in on the act.
At first, Cork country shows by more established artists such as Dwight Yoakam and Marty Stuart did the best, outselling up-and-coming acts such as Lady Antebellum, which drew only 100 fans in Dewey Beach before going on to win seven Grammy Awards.
Soon, a new stable of promising country acts hit the scene and found an early home in Dewey Beach — everyone from Miranda Lambert, Eric Church and Jason Aldean to Old Dominion, Jake Owen and Dierks Bentley.
Relationships between the Cork and the musicians' agents and managers developed over time as the sell-outs built up at the retro roadhouse, which feels more like Austin, Texas, than Dewey Beach, Delaware.
The combination of a unique stage — "You can't take this for granted. There aren't many venues like this anymore," Lucinda Williams said at the Cork earlier this month — and the rock star treatment Walls and Highway One spoil the acts with is what keeps them coming back.
For example, Old Dominion, which opens two shows for Kenny Chesney at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, this weekend, has now played the Dewey Beach area for four summers in a row. They started at The Rusty Rudder in 2014, played two shows at the Cork and then headlined a sold-out show at Hudson Fields this summer.
Even though Highway One's foray into music festivals collapsed after one year, the group bounced back two years later with Hudson Fields, where results have been mixed. The country shows have packed in fans, but non-country shows struggled, including Fitz and the Tantrums (moved to the Cork) and the now-canceled Sept. 15 Christian Music Festival featuring King and Country.
Even so, Highway One's four country sell-outs this summer — Old Dominion, Cole Swindell, Jake Owen and Brothers Osbourne — should soon have company.
Honky tonkers Eli Young Band (Aug. 31) and Lee Brice (Sept. 22) are both on pace to sell out their Cork shows as well. The only non-country act to sell out this summer was Firefly Music Festival alum Fitz and the Tantrums, but that show was moved from the much larger Hudson Fields due to ticket sales.
Country still risky business upstate
One of the reasons the Cork is able to take chances on promising but unproven young acts is because of alcohol sales, fueled in large part by weekly cover band-led Jam Sessions. Those shows help subsidize any losses — losses Pires is willing to absorb if it means an investment on future shows.
Since Highway One also owns The Rusty Rudder, northbeach, Ivy, Jimmy's Grille and more in tiny Dewey alone, a small crowd for a Cork show won't break the bank.
But if you're an upstate nonprofit music venue, drawing a crowd of only 100 people like Lady Antebellum did more than 10 years ago at the Cork can have a lasting impact. And not just on the theater's bottom line, but with both unhappy artists and fans.
That's one of the reasons why The Playhouse and its 1,200 seats bailed on country singer Jerrod Niemann when it became clear that he would be playing to a mostly empty room.
"It flopped out of the gate and died," says Bailey, whose nonprofit theaters cannot sustain a big loss on a show like the Bottle & Cork can. "We had two of the major radio stations around here playing his music and just wearing this thing like a cheap suit. And we couldn't get people to do it."
Bailey and The Playhouse aren't the only upstaters who have chased country music's promise only to be left in the hole.
Following the shuttering of both the Big Barrel and Delaware Junction country music festivals, Wilmington-based nonprofit Trauma Survivors Foundation decided to fill the void last summer.
The group created the one-day Little Barrel Country Music Festival near New Castle as a fundraiser, hosting local and regional country acts such as Sam Grow, A Different Breed, The Hung Jury Band and Country By Night.
The result was not what founder and president Dennis Carradin, a trauma psychologist, had in mind. The festival came nowhere close to the 2,500 fans they had hoped to draw as they attempted to piggy-back on the state's country craze.
"We maybe had 400 to 500 people," says Carradin, who travels to sites of disasters such as 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing and Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings to aid in the recovery.
"Everyone asks to do country and then they just don't show up," Carradin adds. "We lost a ton. And as a 501(c)(3), you can't afford to lose money. We're still in the arrears."
Forty miles south on Del. 1, a different move toward country has found success.
Twenty-three years after first meeting while dancing to country music in Dover, Jim and Felicia Baker have come full circle.
They purchased the former Ice Lounge in Dover -- known as Arizona's in the mid-'90s when they first met there -- in 2012. The first order of business was transforming it back to a country music club. Instead of going back to its Western-tinged name of Arizona's, they went with Cowboy Up.
The club, the closest thing in the state to an all-country bar with live music, now hosts line dancing and concerts while offering a countryfied menu with hushpuppies and sandwiches such as the "Campfire Burger."
"There seemed to be a niche for it in the Dover area. Whenever local places would have a country night, it would be so crowded," says Jim Baker. "It was more frustrating than confusing as to why no one else was doing it."
Five years later, the couple still owns the 500-person club and the regulars still shuffle in. They caught the country craze at the right time.
"We don't have any reason to stop," he says.
Meanwhile, music clubs and theaters upstate are still searching for a reason to start.
Contact Ryan Cormier of The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier), Twitter (@ryancormier) and Instagram (@ryancormier).