St. Thomas Activities and Recreation announced Tuesday that country singer Easton Corbin will be the musical act headlining this year’s Tommie Fest on May 14.
The singer is currently on tour with Carrie Underwood and will stop at St. Thomas in between shows in Billings, Montana and Kansas City, Missouri, according to Krysten Edwards, assistant director of Campus Life.
Past concerts sponsored by STAR have featured Andy Grammer, Karmin and Rachel Platten, but the last country artist to come to St. Thomas was Phillip Phillips in the fall of 2013. Edwards said that his proximity to Minnesota and his genre of music made Corbin the perfect choice for this semester’s show.
“A lot of it is routing, (looking at) who is going to be nearby,” Edwards said.
“We did a survey, and country was one of the top three genres that students would be interested in,” she added.
Tommie Fest wristbands will be available at 4:30 p.m. with activities beginning at 5 p.m. on the John P. Monahan Plaza. Edwards said there will be a climbing wall, a two-person gyroscope, “big tricycle” races, caricature drawings and metallic tattoos, among other activities.
The Summit Singers and other to-be-confirmed student performers will entertain the festival-goers from 6 to 8 p.m., and free food will be available at 7 p.m. Doors to the concert, taking place in Woulfe Alumni Hall in the Anderson Student Center, open at 8 p.m.
The concert begins at 8:30 p.m. Country music singer Mickey Guyton will open for Corbin.
STAR was unable to book a musical act for the spring concert of 2015, so the group hosted its first-ever Tommie Fest instead. This year, Edwards said, STAR and Campus Life decided to keep the carnival in addition to hosting a concert.
“We are always wanting to change what we are doing in order to meet student wants and needs, and I don’t think we necessarily wanted to take away that carnival part since the students really liked it,” Edwards said. “I think the addition of a larger concert makes it even better.”
Sophie Carson can be reached at sophia.carson@stthomas.edu.