A lesson from Red Cloud: When a small town insists on thriving, it can
A lesson from Red Cloud: When a small town insists on thriving, it can
Red Cloud native Matthew Hansen wrote a feature about Red Cloud following the Hear Nebraska organization's Good Living Tour stop out at the Starke Round Barn on July 24th, 2016. The introduction is reprinted below. Click here to read the full story.
The final band waves goodbye. The event organizer ambles to the mic and thanks everyone for coming. People fold up their lawn chairs as the sun dips low in the sky. The one-of-a-kind show in my hometown is over.
Then a voice from the back pierces through the silence, a voice with other ideas about the end of the Good Living Tour’s show on a July Sunday in Red Cloud.
“One more song!” the voice yells. Somebody else chimes in. “Yeah, one more!” A third: “Come on!”
It isn’t an organized chant, not a piece of orchestrated pageantry like you have witnessed at a million concerts.
The shouts sound more surprising than that, more organic. They sound like pleas, fitting pleas considering we are here to celebrate something — local, live Nebraska music — that seemingly died in rural Nebraska long ago. Fitting pleas because we are sitting in a small town, Red Cloud, left for dead a long time ago, too.
Over 250 people showed up to the concert!
