Picktown Palooza offers local bands opportunity to open for national acts

PICKERINGTON, Ohio (DimpleTimes) – Picktown Palooza founder Chris Stein had a chance to share with us about the upcoming Path to Picktown Palooza. Path to Picktown Palooza is an event that Picktown Palooza and CRAFT & VINYL work together to allow local bands from pretty much any community to submit their band information for the opportunity to prove themselves. Over a period of six weeks, the bands will be dwindled down to allow local bands to perform with headlining artists during the Picktown Palooza event happening July 9th-11th.

“We get a lot of bands that request to play the event each year,” Chris admitted in regard to Picktown Palooza. “So instead of me, you know, reviewing each single band that comes through that wants to play over the course of those three days, we decided to create this Path to Picktown Palooza.”

Bands can submit their information by visiting PicktownPalooza.org and by clicking on the Path to Picktown Palooza button.

Check out the press release from the founder of Picktown Palooza below.

Pickerington, Ohio – Picktown Palooza founder, Chris Stein has formed a partnership with CRAFT & VINYL founder, Troy Stacy to create an opportunity for area bands to share the bill with national acts featured on its main stage.

In its fourth year, the Picktown Palooza is one of the largest community events in Pickerington with dates this summer of Thursday July 9, Friday July 10 and Saturday July 11. The Palooza is designed to bring the community together through attractions including food vendors; carnival rides and hugely attended concerts each day of the event, which draws 15,000 to 18,000 attendees.

The partnership between Stein and Stacy has culminated with a new program, Path to Picktown Palooza designed as a series of showcase performance dates where rock bands that aspire to share the bill with multi-platinum Cinderella’s Tom Keifer can apply to perform a showcase date at CRAFT & VINYL. A similar series of showcase dates will be announced for country bands too. The Palooza has a country super star confirming in just a matter of days, which it can’t divulge quite yet. A panel of judges including Stein, Stacy, radio personalities, professional musicians and members of the music media will evaluate performances to determine which bands ultimately earn the opportunity to take the stage at Picktown Palooza.

Judges will evaluate each Path to Picktown Palooza showcase performer in five distinct categories including professionalism, performance, stage presence, fan attendance votes and social media promotion, with each category having a possible score between 1 and 5 stars.

For Stein, this a great way to properly vet the flood of bands that approach him every year for the opportunity to open for the Picktown Palooza national acts which have included Tyler Rich, Pop 2000 Tour hosted by *NSYNC’s Lance Bass with performances by Tyler Hilton, Ryan Cabrera, Aaron Carter and O-Town, plus Dokken, Enuff Z’Nuff, Night Ranger, The Kentucky Headhunters, Cracker, Soul Asylum and Kate Hastings Band. Stein says, “it also serves as a great grass roots activation to engage the community and get them talking about the Palooza well in advance of its dates this summer”.

For Stacy, it stands as another proof point that he continues to work hard to create opportunities for music artists in the Columbus community by positioning his stage at CRAFT & VINYL as a jumping off point to larger stages and bigger audiences. Say’s Stacy, “young and growing artists aren’t being nurtured by the music industry anymore. It’s up to us as a community to develop our music creators through building legitimate opportunities for them. I take this very seriously”.

Rock and Country bands that feel they can captivate and entertain the massive crowds and aspire to share the bill with the national acts can apply for the opportunity to showcase at CRAFT & VINYL by visiting www.PicktownPalooza.org and clicking the Path to Picktown Palooza button at the top of the page.

Main Photo courtesy of Missie Tong Photography.