Luke Bryan’s Blossom show just one of two in Ohio; second is Farm Tour stop in rural Pleasantville

Luke Bryan

Luke Bryan packed Cleveland Browns FirstEnergy Stadium on Sept. 5, 2015. This time, his show will be at Blossom Music Center. It's one of two Ohio shows he'll play this season.The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Luke Bryan loves Ohio almost as much as Ohio loves Luke Bryan.

The latter has been evident courtesy of his sold-out shows at Blossom Music Center, to which he returns on Saturday, Sept. 14, as well as dates at both Cleveland Browns FirstEnergy Stadium and Progressive Field.

The other side of the relationship will be evident two weeks later, when his Farm Tour 2019 stops at Miller Family Farms in Pleasantville, less than 30 miles from Columbus and 125 miles from Cleveland.

Bryan spoke in a conference call to discuss the Farm Tour 2019, which raises money and meals for farmers and local food banks by staging shows at actual working farms in rural areas where a major concert never happens. But he noted that fans at the Blossom gig — and other stops on the more commercial Sunset Repeat Tour — can use the hashtag #HeresToTheFarmer to donate.

And he fully expects Blossom fans to help the Farm Tour and sponsor Bayer to reach their goal of providing 1 million meals. Each time that hashtag is used, Bayer will donate a meal.

“Blossom has been such an amazing venue for me,” said Bryan in response to a Plain Dealer query. “We may do the ‘HeresToTheFarmer’ campaign on our big screen.”

“I think it’s amazing that in a state like Ohio I’ve been able to play the football stadium there, the baseball stadium and now I can go down and have a Farm Tour show and still have a Blossom show,” Bryan said.

Many mainstream country acts have farming in their core, and Bryan is no different. Though raised “in town” in Leesburg, Georgia, he is the son of an agriculture fertilizer company owner who dabbled in peanut farming.

As such, he’s aware of the current strife facing America’s farmers in the wake of the U.S. trade and tariff war with China.

“I was with my dad last week, and it was the first time I understood the [trouble] this trade war was bringing to the overall prices of commodities,” said Bryan, whose Georgia Southern University degree is in business administration.

“No matter what style of industry, you always have to work hard at it,” Bryan said. “Farmers have always been forced for many, many years to do twice the work and make less money.

“I do know the trade war is affecting them to some extent,” he said. “They’ll have to work it out. I know pecan farmers in my area of South Georgia export tons of pecans to China. Wherever we are in this tariff war, it’s dropped the price of pecans.”

Bryan is concerned about the long-term ramifications of the trade war and tariffs.

“The tough part for the American farmer is that as China grows as a country, they’re going to grow more of the own product, and need U.S. products a lot less,” he said. “We’ve got to make the American farmer be smarter about who is representing them and speaking for them.

“I think that at the end of all this, you have to protect the small farmer, too,” said Bryan.

An avid hunter and fisherman, Bryan said that his career has allowed him to buy about 300 acres’ worth of farmland that doubles as a place for him to do his deer-hunting.

“I have a farmer who farms it, and lots of time, but I wonder if I should just buy some tractors and stuff and farm my 300 acres for myself,” he said. “I told my dad and he said, ‘Absolutely not. You’ll never make any money.’ ”

Friends of his who are farmers agreed and advised him against it, but all that has done is increase his empathy for the people in the agriculture industry.

“It makes me almost want to farm it to see how I can learn a little more what the American farmer is up against,” he said.

In the meantime, he’s happy to use the Farm Tour and the #HeresToTheFarmer hashtag to do his part, and dispel some of the misconceptions urban Americans may have about their rural cousins.

“Farm Tour can showcase the positives of what the American farmers do,” Bryan said. “At the end of the day, these guys are waking up, putting in 20-hour days.

“It’s people working really tough situations and tough jobs and a lot of the time, they don’t see the silver lining,” he said. “They are feeding the world.”

PREVIEW

Luke Bryan

What: Sunset Repeat Tour.

When: 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 14.

Where: Blossom Music Center, 1145 W. Steels Corners Road, Cuyahoga Falls.

Openers: Cole Swindell, Jon Langston.

Tickets: $30 to $99.75, plus fees, at the box office, ticketmaster.com and by phone at 1-800-745-3000.

What: The Farm Tour.

When: 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28.

Where: Miller Family Farms, Carroll Eastern Road Northeast, Pleasantville, Ohio.

Openers: Cole Swindell, Mitchell Tenpenny, the Peach Pickers, DJ Rock.

Tickets: $56, only at lukebryan.com/farm-tour and bigtickets.com. Parking is $5 in advance, available at the websites, or $20 at the gate.

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