2015 Lakefront Music Fest in Prior Lake, Minnesota

2015 Lakefront Music Fest in Prior Lake, Minnesota

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for July 26, 2015

Friday night brought us to Lakefront Music Fest in Prior Lake's Lakefront Park.  We wanted to show up early to see the first act, Chris Hawkey.  He's one of the morning personalities on the local sports radio channel, KFAN, and I've been listening to him for years.  He was flying high performing in front of a crowd this size.  I had the impression he hadn't performed in front of thousands of people like were at this show before.  He did a great job and was having an absolute ball interacting with the fans in the crowd.  Plus, he did a pretty good job singing.

We hung out with our rowdy friends for most of the night.  It was country night, so we felt that gave us the right to get a little bit out of control.

Rodney Atkins was next up on the agenda.  I'm sure some people love his music, but it didn't do much for me.  I'm just not much of a fan of country music.  He did have a nice hat, though.

Chris Hawkey walked by and asked to get a picture with us.  We just had to oblige.

By the time the headliner was coming on stage, we somehow found ourselves positioned directly in the front row.  We met some new friends down there that appeared to like making bunny ears in the air for some reason.

I swear, there had to be like 50 or 60 people there.

We were starting to get restless holding on to the front row railing.  Bring on the music!!

Suddenly this old cowboy appeared and started singing.  His name was Dwight Yoakam and apparently he's a big deal on the country circuit.  We listened to a couple of songs, looked at each other, and then decided to go home.  We figured somebody else would really appreciate those front row positions.

On Saturday night, we brought Grandma Linda along for the ride.  It was rock and roll night and this lady is Miss Rock and Roll.

We missed LA Guns, but arrived in the middle of Lita Ford's performance.  I remember her from the movie the Runaways as well as the song she did with Ozzy Osbourne called Close Your Eyes Forever.  She also sang Kiss Me Deadly which woke up the crowd quite a bit.  Most of the rest of her songs she played, I didn't know.  But she was fun to watch.

Between sets, some guy from Kool 108 was challenging people in the crowd to do wacky things for free merchandise.  I watched this guy take off his dirty shoe, let them pour a beer in it, and then he chugged the beer out of it.  It kind of made me ill to watch, but maybe you'll enjoy it more than I did.  Here's the video I shot of it:

Night Ranger was up next and they also played a lot of songs I didn't know, even though I knew they had a lot of songs that I did know.  The lead singer even made a comment about how it drives the audience nuts when they want to try to sell their new music rather then play their classic songs that everybody knows and loves.  They did end their act with some of their hits like Sister Christian and You Can Still Rock in America which were real fun.  I didn't know they sang the theme song to the Michael J Fox Movie, The Secret of My Success, which they also played.  I love that movie.

Daughtry was the headliner and he was great.  At least his first 3 or 4 songs were great.  Grandma Linda got tired and so we decided to leave early.  We kind of regret our decision, because Daughtry was one of the main reasons we went and we were enjoying his music as we walked out of the park.  Oh, well.  There's always next year's Music Fest.