FAIRBURY – Combine a small Southeast Nebraska city’s desire to inject life into its downtown with a local band’s dream to develop a full day of live performances and a mission to make it easier for kids to begin their own musical journeys and you get Hullabalooza, what the city of Fairbury hopes will become an annual end-of-summer musical and community showcase.  

A dream that’s been in development for years finally came to pass this Saturday, when the city of Fairbury formally unveiled its new band shell and amphitheater at Conrad Park, on the corner of the city’s downtown square, showcasing the new space with a full day of live music and activities.  

“It’s been a long time, I think, since Fairbury’s done something like this,” said Colby Ferris, a member of the Hullabalooza committee and the drummer for Monsters at Bay, a longstanding local band that featured as the event’s closing act. “Being able to try to do something for the community, for the schools, it’s just something we wanted to do. We’ve been in the band for a long time, and we’ve always wanted to pull off something like this, and to be able to bring in some other community members and businesses to help us along the way – it's been amazing.” 

“A huge thank you to the Hullabalooza committee for their vision for this project, and all the hard work and fundraising efforts to make it all come together,” Fairbury mayor Kelly Davis said in his address to the crowd Saturday. “We’ve had lots of meetings, we discussed, we cussed, but I think we made it all come together and it’s going to be a great day.” 

The plan for the Conrad Park space has been in the works for a few years, dating back to when Spencer Brown was Fairbury’s mayor and Davis served on the city council. The council then approved plans for the space as part of capital improvement plans in 2023, leveraging some money the city received through ARPA. The band shell itself has been steadily constructed and installed over the last few months, entirely funded through grants. 

“Although Conrad Park is just a small part of the parks system, it’s a huge impact on the entire community because of its location to the downtown square, where for hundreds of years, all of our events have happened in Fairbury,” said Laura Bedlan, Fairbury’s development director. “For that reason, for many years, the city has had plans to improve this park, proposing to not only make it an oasis in the commercial district, but also a place for the community to congregate and host even more events on the square.” 

And Saturday’s spectacle was meant to be just one of many events to utilize the space. Organizers showed up at 6 AM to start setting up fencing around the corner of downtown before the planning committee, city council and chamber of commerce united to formally cut the ribbon on the Conrad Park amphitheater at 10:30. Dodging some rain late in the morning, over the course of 12 hours Saturday musicians of all genres – mostly from in or around Southeast Nebraska – became the first performers to officially grace the stage, achieving the dream for both artists and organizers alike. 

“We’ve done thousands of shows and whatnot together, and we’ve always wanted to throw a festival. We came up with the idea after this new amphitheater was built that we would try to do something down here,” said Ferris. “And then the stars aligned: Mayor Davis was wanting to do a grand opening for it, we wanted to do a festival, and everything clicked. We joined together, and made a little committee, came up with this Hullabalooza, and here we are.” 

“We had a couple people in town who had dreams: Mayor Kelly Davis wanted to do a grand opening, Colby Ferris and Monsters at Bay wanted to do a really good night of concerts,” said committee member Abby Hasselbring. “We came together and formed the Hullabalooza committee, and today was kind of their dream.” 

The event was designed to showcase the artists on stage but also other key members of the Fairbury community: the weekly Saturday morning farmer’s market went on as usual while the fences were erected; Griffey’s, a restaurant across the street from the stage, served food throughout the day; and Tooley’s, the bar across the other street from the stage, provided the drinks. 

“We see a lot of people on and off every day and reach out to a lot of different people. It’s just another way for us to support the community that has supported us a lot,” said Hasselbring, who co-owns Tooley’s with her brother Aaron, another committee member. “I think it’ll bring just a lot of social time to downtown Fairbury again, maybe liven the place up a little.” 

And the event was created with a bigger goal in mind as well. This year, part of the proceeds are going directly to the band program at Fairbury Public Schools to help fund the purchase of equipment and instruments, giving local kids – such as trombonist Bryson Joe, who kicked off the proceedings with the national anthem – an avenue to begin to pursue a passion in music.

“I’ve been with my band members for a long time, and music’s our passion. There’s kids out there, we want them to be more involved in music. I wasn’t in band in junior high or high school, found that love afterwards, and I really want to inspire the kids that it’s something awesome that you can do,” Ferris said. “For us to be able to help provide an instrument to a kid at the school, that’s what we’re looking for, to give them that opportunity to get in there and pick up that trumpet or that trombone, or whatever it may be. Music lives on forever. To be able to play it, to show it, to do it, it’s quite a blast.” 

All of the event’s organizers were ultimately singing the same tune Saturday: they want this to just be the first of many Hullabalooza events held this time of year every year in Fairbury. They’ve already got leads on a local organization to be the beneficiary of the fundraiser, and while the musical lineup might not be set, the stage to show them off certainly is – and it’s now available for any musicians in town who want to use it.