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Fairport Harbor Live at the Lighthouse music festival to present Jerry Garcia’s Birthday Celebration
The tradition of marking a well-known musician’s birthday with an outdoor concert in Fairport Harbor Village is continuing for a third straight year.
Jerry Garcia’s Birthday Celebration is slated for Aug. 5, as part of the Live at the Lighthouse music festival series. Music begins at 3 p.m. and continues into the evening.
Three bands will perform during the celebration:
• 3 p.m. — Citizens’ Dead
• 5 p.m. — Dupree’s Dead Band
• 7:45 p.m. — The JiM Miller Band
Admission is free of charge to the concert, which will be held at the Lighthouse Amphitheater, located just north of the Fairport Harbor Marine Museum and Lighthouse at 129 Second St. The hill beside the historical attraction serves as a seating area, and people can bring blankets and lawn chairs.
Fairport Harbor Arts and Culture Alliance, which sponsors and organizes Live at the Lighthouse, describes Jerry Garcia’s Birthday Celebration as “Ohio best annual Grateful Dead tribute concert.”
Garcia, who was a guitarist and singer for the Grateful Dead, died in 1995 at the age of 53. He was born on Aug. 1, 1942.
When the alliance presented its first Live at the Lighthouse series in 2021, the concert was held on Aug. 1 of that year — coinciding with what would have been the musician’s 79th birthday.
For the past two years, Garcia’s birthday has not fallen on a Saturday or Sunday. So the alliance has scheduled the celebration in August on the initial Saturday after the first day of the month.
Along with an abundance of music, the event will offer an assortment of food choices for spectators. Food trucks that will be on hand to serve up their specialties are CLE Chicken, Off the Griddle, Rabbit Food, Manna Truck, Cheesy Dave’s and Smooth Rider Smoothies.
Alcoholic beverages also will be sold by Cavalier Distributing.
Fairport Harbor Arts and Culture Alliance, a nonprofit organization, initially announced in early 2020 that it would launch the Live at the Lighthouse music festival series. The group’s leaders agreed to take over administration of a summer concert series called “Fill the Hill,” which was planned and conducted by community volunteer Casey Conrad.
One of the alliance’s first decision was to give the concert series a new name: Live at the Lighthouse.
Although the group intended to start Live at the Lighthouse during the summer of 2020, those plans were scrapped because of health and safety risks which arose at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The alliance restarted Live at the Lighthouse in 2021, with the first concert — Reggae in the Harbor — occurring on July 10 of that year. Reggae in the Harbor also has become an annual show in the series.
Over the past few years, the alliance has worked hard to improve Live at the Lighthouse, said Justin Levine, who is co-chairman of the organization.
These upgrades have created “the best production for fans and the best experience for visitors to Fairport Harbor,” he noted.
“This year, we have followed the recommendations we have received from previous acts to have longer set lengths and more collaboration between bands to produce a show with less overlap and more songs,” he said.
In addition, he said the alliance continues to strive for a music festival experience by “bringing unique vendors to the show (in-state and out-of-state), trailering in a large stage, and contracting some of the best sound and light engineers to produce the show.”
Levine also said the Live at the Lighthouse concerts are helping to boost tourism in Fairport Harbor.
“We continue to receive a high number of visitors from outside Lake County who stay in our plentiful Airbnbs, rent golf carts and make a weekend out of our shows,” he said.
Levine said that concert days are always high-grossing days for Fairport Harbor’s downtown commercial district.
“We always work hard to push more visitors from the beach up the hill to the amazing mom-and-pop shops and restaurants within walking distance from the beach and our concert venue,” he said.
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