He's got the moves

CELINA - Delayed 364 days by COVID-19 and 30 minutes by rain, BlackHawk and Sawyer Brown finally got to play at the Mercer County Fair.

An early-evening rain shower kept opening act BlackHawk from taking the stage until 8:30, but the show was able to go ahead. Fans turned out in droves to hear them on Friday night.

"It's nice to get back into it," Deb Groff of Fort Loramie said. "Glad this concert's getting in here before they shut everything down again. But we've been waiting a long time for this concert."

The fans weren't the only ones glad to be out. Sawyer Brown had to stop touring for 15 months during the pandemic, and keyboardist Gregg "Hobie" Hubbard said his appreciation for live shows had gone up "a hundred notches".

"This year feels like more than ever people are ready to be out of the house and just forget about the rest of the day, and we plan to be the background music for that," Hubbard said in a phone interview earlier this week. "Just get out and have a good time, and fairs are just prime for that."

The track in front of the stage was packed with fans in brightly clad summer clothes who seemed undeterred by the announcement of the delay or the rain that set in after the music started. Even when a steady shower set in around the middle of BlackHawk's "Almost a Memory Now," the crowd remained unfazed.

The majority were middle-aged and would have been around when the two groups' music was first played on the radio. A big cheer went up when BlackHawk lead singer Henry Paul asked who had grown up listening to them, but there was a contingent of younger fans too.  

When the concert finally got underway, Black Hawk kicked things off with hits "Down in Flames" and "Goodbye Says It All." Sawyer Brown came on a little after 9:30 and opened with "The Boys and Me," "Drive Me Wild" and "Cafe on the Corner."

Sawyer Brown's first three songs got a wild response from the crowd, particularly after Miller said, "This one's for the farmers" before "Cafe on the Corner." The general consensus beforehand, though, was that anything in the two bands' repertoire would be welcome.

"Everything's good," Groff said.

"All of them, man," said Celina's Kurt Jutte about which songs he was looking forward to. "Ready to rock out."

Hubbard, lead singer Mark Miller and three other members of Don King's road band founded Sawyer Brown in the early '80s, with big hits like "Some Girls Do" and "The Race Is On" vaulting it to the top of the charts in the '90s.

Miller was born outside Dayton and first met Hubbard in high school when Miller's family moved to Florida. He also produces the Christian band Casting Crowns, which is scheduled to perform at the fairgrounds tonight.

Hubbard considers county fairs the perfect stage for Sawyer Brown, both because the more intimate setting allows the band to make a stronger connection with the audience and because most of its songs are based on small-town life.

"The heart and soul of our band is pretty rurally based anyway, so we might be the target band for rural America," he said.

Hubbard hoped that fans came away happy with the long-anticipated show.

"I hope everybody, first and foremost, has a good time, and that at some point, there's some song that has made a real connection with them," he said on Wednesday. "I know when I go to see shows, there's nothing like hearing that one song you've been waiting to hear."