The Jacksonville Main Street Downtown Concert Series wraps up the 2023 season tonight with a highly regarded tribute artist.
“Almost” Elton John rolls into downtown Jacksonville tonight for the final show of the downtown concert season. Jerred Price is a self-taught pianist who started playing at the age of three and whose talent carried him to be the featured performer at Sir Elton John’s 60th Birthday celebration in New York City at the Elton John AIDS Foundation’s “Lunch Around the World” event.
Jacksonville Main Street Executive Director Judy Tighe says she hopes another big crowd turns out for the show tonight despite the call for hot weather. “This is an Elton John tribute band that’s really highly recommended and reviewed. So we’re really hoping that everybody braves the heat, brings some water, and we’ll have some water available, and come see this show! We want to go out with a big bang, and hopefully, that’s not the weather.”
“Almost Elton John” and his backing band “The RocketMen” are a complete tribute performance group, however, Tighe says they likely will be toning down a little bit of the pageantry for tonight’s show due to the continued heat wave.
“I know they were talking about doing some costume changing early on, and I think that has fallen off by the wayside because we were going to make a changing room for them out of a tent, and they have since reached out and said that won’t be necessary.
So I don’t know what he will be wearing but I think most likely with as much touring as this particular act has done, they’ve encountered some weather where they have to be prepared.”
Tighe says extra precautions are planned to help concertgoers beat the heat so they don’t miss an exciting performer. She says downtown itself can surprisingly be one of the cooler places around town to be outside when the temperature is high.
“The square has always been a little bit of a wind tunnel. It’s an anomaly, a lot of times the wind will be blowing in the opposite direction of what it is actually blowing around on the square. It’s kind of strange, but the buildings kind of change the direction of the airflow a little bit. So hopefully we’ll be able to take advantage of that.
Melissa [Hebron] and I are talking about a couple of options, maybe some things we might be able to do to help cool some folks down.”
Jerred Price and his band have a longstanding residency at the famous Lafayette’s Music Room in Memphis, Tennessee, and were awarded the “Best Tribute Act” at the first-ever “Tommy Awards” in Memphis in 2022.
Food trucks and drinks from Golden Eagle distributing go on sale at 6:00 pm and the Almost Elton John concert runs from 7;00 to 9:00 pm on the northwest corner of the square tonight in Downtown Jacksonville.