Celebrate Anderson Kicks Off Labor Day Weekend with Music, Drone Show
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
Labor Day weekend in Anderson County has long been a time of music, art and hot air balloons. It started with Freedom Weekend Aloft and evolved into Celebrate Anderson in recent years, with this year finding a new location due to the renovations at the Anderson Civic Center.
Nearby Balloon Hill is home to this year’s weekend of free events and fund raising. Starting today, this year features three days of hot-air balloons, fireworks, drones, music, food, vendors, livestock, a Scottish Highland cow, a color run, a motorcycle ride by U.S. Combat Veterans and, possibly, a pie-eating contest.
Things kick off tonight with the Cancer Association of Anderson’s “Hot Air Affair: Rising Above Cancer.” The balloon festival will continue through Sunday, when it will merge, in effect, with Celebrate Anderson, the county’s 27th annual Labor Day gathering. The result is a weekend that turns Anderson County’s bicentennial into a single sprawling time of gratitude, memory and regional self-regard celebration.
The principal musical gathering begins Sunday at 4 p.m., with Dani Rucker (yes, Darius is her father), Winyah and the eight-piece Yacht Rock Schooner. Rucker brings an indie-folk sensibility shaped by Americana and modern indie-pop; Winyah supplies the fast-moving Southern-rock energy; and Yacht Rock Schooner closes the program with the polished, famously durable soft-rock of the 1970s and 1980s. The concert is free, though attendees are asked reserve free tickets, and blankets and camp chairs are welcome. After the music, the field will become the preferred viewing ground for the county’s synchronized bicentennial drone-and-fireworks finale.
The two events have distinct purposes. The Hot Air Affair raises money for local cancer patients. Celebrate Anderson to gather a county that includes cities, towns, rural communities, industries and newcomers into one common end-of-summer party. But during this year’s bicentennial, both will occupy the balloon launch field near the Civic Center, creating a shared landscape of burners, music, flags, fireworks and people looking upward.
Celebrate Anderson began in 1998 with an idea of gathering the county’s municipalities together for one shared event. Twenty-seven years later, it has become an annual expression of countywide confidence, amplified this year by the 200th anniversary of Anderson County.
Matt Hogan, the county’s deputy administrator, said the event may now be the largest free Labor Day weekend celebration in South Carolina. The county expects more than 30,000 visitors during the weekend.
Celebrate Anderson remains free because of sponsors including Michelin, Duke Energy, Tri-County Technical College and Arthrex.
