Lockn' Music Festival Round Two

The Lockn' music festival is back for its second year. Last year Nelson County brought in 25,000 people. This year they expect even more.

The festival features top artists such as tom petty and Willy Neslon. The four day event begins tomorrow and as its second year, most of the growing pains have been taken care of.

'Last year really kind of gelled in a great way and the word got out. It was a lot easier from our perspective wanting to do this,' Mentions Dave Frey, co-creator of Lockn'.

The creators have added more of just about everything, and are ready for the huge flow of people throughout the weekend. A lot of the issues from last year have been addressed. One of the biggest was the traffic. The founders bought about 400 acres of land directly next door to the festival site, which really helped with logistics. That not only allowed for more room on the road, but opened up many more opportunities for the event.

Some extra land next to the area is going to provide 8 new lanes for people to enter, as well as the ability to enter at 6 a.m. Some local vendors are looking forward to this opportunity to showcase this area of Virginia....

'Anything like this where 25 thousand people from outside are coming into our gorgeous area of the world it's gonna be a good thing for all the businesses and just want to welcome them with great food and great music and hope they want to have a great time and want to come back year after year. Make this thing huge,' comments Harrison Keevil, a restaurant owner in Charlottesville.

The founders Peter Shapiro and Dave Frey love this central location and expect visitors from all 50 states.

'It's a 6-7 hour drive from New York, it's 6-7 hours from Ohio, 6-7 hours from Atlanta Georgia. This location here in Nelson County is the right location to host the best music festival in the county.'

This of course means a serious inflow of money to Nelson County, something that Lockn' is ready to help...

Ben Thompson is the manager of food and drink for Lockn' and has gone local: 'The vendors here the main attraction are 20 different local businesses and products so each of the restaurants is showcasing a local product and they may have other things that are made here in Nelson County.'

All the local wineries are invited, and a goal is to give them success, but Lockn' knows what kind of crowd they cater to.

'We've found that this audience drinks beer. We're not as much of the wine and cheese sit on the blanket and listen to the symphony type of situation here, you know it's a little more rambunctious,' remarks Frey.

The festival had to seek many workers with festival experience last year, but now with experience of its own, Lockn' can search locally for help. New roads were installed from locally purchased gravel; local carpenters, construction workers, and even the event workers are local, so clearly there's is a trend toward giving back to the community.

Entities 0 Name: Lockn Count: 4 1 Name: Nelson County Count: 4 2 Name: Dave Frey Count: 2 3 Name: Ben Thompson Count: 1 4 Name: Virginia Count: 1 5 Name: Frey Count: 1 6 Name: New York Count: 1 7 Name: Willy Neslon Count: 1 8 Name: Charlottesville Count: 1 9 Name: Harrison Keevil Count: 1 10 Name: Ohio Count: 1 11 Name: Atlanta Georgia Count: 1 12 Name: tom petty Count: 1 13 Name: Peter Shapiro Count: 1 Related Keywords 0 Name: lockn Score: 60 1 Name: 6-7 Score: 30 2 Name: local Score: 30 3 Name: festival Score: 28 4 Name: frey Score: 26 5 Name: nelson Score: 23 6 Name: county Score: 19 7 Name: vendors Score: 13 8 Name: year Score: 13 9 Name: location Score: 12 Authors Media Images 0