“Rock the Country” Cancels Summer Visit to Anderson, Other Towns
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
The country-music roadshow that billed itself as a small-town celebration of American grit will not be coming back to Anderson or several other towns this summer.
For the past two summers, “Rock the Country” transformed the Anderson County fairgrounds into a temporary city of food trucks, RVs, and flag-bedecked pickup trucks, drawing tens of thousands of visitors and generating what local officials described as a multi‑million‑dollar economic jolt to the Upstate. This year’s installment, however, has been quietly scrubbed: promoters have cancelled the Anderson date without offering a public explanation, even as they continue to explore a slate of up to 10 other concerts that could land in the county in the months ahead.
The unraveling of the Anderson stop has played out in real time on social media, where artists have begun to distance themselves from the festival’s increasingly politically charged reputation. Earlier today, Shinedown, the arena‑rock band with a broad, cross‑format following, announced on Instagram that it would no longer perform at Rock the Country. “Shinedown is everyone’s band,” the group wrote, casting its decision as an act of principle rather than logistics. “We have one BOSS, and it is everyone in the audience. Our band’s purpose is to unite, not divide. With that in mind, we have made the decision that we will not be playing the Rock the Country Festival.” Anticipating the blowback that often greets such withdrawals, the band added that it did not want to “participate in something we believe will create further division,” and closed with a note of gratitude to its fans: “We love and appreciate you always.”
Shinedown is the fourth act to step away from the Anderson‑linked festival, following earlier exits by Ludacris, Morgan Wade, and Carter Faith. Their departures have underscored a tension at the heart of Rock the Country, which presents itself, on its website, as “more than just a festival” and “a celebration of community, tradition, and the spirit that’s carried America through 250 years,” even as it has been branded online as a “MAGA fest,” owing in part to the vocal support that several of its headliners have expressed for President Donald Trump.
The festival’s architecture has grown more complicated as the brand has expanded. What began as a single touring package has now split into two lineups, one of which was slated for Anderson and another that continues on without it. That second configuration, still scheduled to visit seven venues nationwide between May and September, is anchored by stars such as Kid Rock, Jason Aldean, Blake Shelton, Jelly Roll, Riley Green, Miranda Lambert, Brooks & Dunn, and Ella Langley, among others—all familiar names on country radio and, in some cases, on the political stage.
In Anderson, where the county government has treated Rock the Country as both a cultural event and a test of the area’s capacity to host large‑scale entertainment, the cancellation lands with a particular sting. Officials emphasize not the politics of the festival but its practical benefits: hotel rooms filled, restaurants crowded, the fairgrounds repurposed as proof of concept for a region that fancies itself on the verge of a new kind of tourism. “The event was a huge success,” wrote the county in a news release, “drawing tens of thousands of visitors” and demonstrating “what a great venue and exceptional hospitality we have here in Anderson County.” The county remains optimistic that the potential long list of shows will more than make up for the cancellation of a single festival.
What replaces it—whether a series of smaller, less freighted shows or another marquee event with its own constellation of allegiances—remains to be seen. For now, Anderson is left with the afterimage of a festival that, in promising to celebrate community, inadvertently revealed how difficult it has become to agree on what, exactly, community is concerning entertainment.
