PEABODY — The Lisa Love Experience was mid-performance at the city’s outdoor concert on the Peabody Veterans Memorial High School football field Sunday night when heavy wind and rain pummeled the region, leaving those in attendance scrambling for shelter and forcing the concert and accompanying fireworks to be canceled.
Love said her band had only completed about four songs when the storm bore down on the city, leaving band members forced to grab hold of the tents covering their equipment.
“We were holding the tents down because all the equipment is getting soaked, all the PAs, the monitors, the lights, it started puddling on the stage. My shoes — I was dumping water out of my shoes, my jacket was like ten pounds … the tents did nothing, the stage was a puddle in minutes,” Love said in a telephone interview following the concert. “My guitar player was literally standing on top of a subwoofer holding the tarp over the speakers and the subwoofer, and he’s standing, crouching down … and on top of that the entire band, even though we were under the tent, we were [soaked], I looked like a drowned rat.”
Ahead of the concert, Love had consulted with Mayor Edward A. Bettencourt Jr. on whether or not inclement weather would hit the city, and was reassured that if rain did arrive it would likely last only 15 minutes.
“He spoke to his weather guy before we went on and his weather person said something’s gonna come through around 7:30, 8 o’clock, it should be quick it should only be about 15 minutes. We thought that it was just going to be some sprinkles … we would get some tarps on real quick and then we could finish up. But the way the storm came in, I think it took everybody by surprise,” she said.
Love said despite most of the crowd relocating to the nearby Field House for cover, there was no chance of resuming the show once the storm hit.
“We couldn’t restart the concert, it was literally like a tornado came through,” she said. “The tarps and the tents were halfway over, everything was soaking wet like we put everything in a pool — including us.”
Ward 4 Councilor Julie Daigle was at the concert serving as a volunteer and said she ran over to help the band when the rain started coming down, grabbing hold of a tent to try and protect some of their equipment.
“I don’t know if it was because I was holding a tent or electronic equipment, it wasn’t lightning, but I did get a little zapped,” Daigle said. “It was an electrifying night.”
Bettencourt said he expected some “trickiness” with the weather, but not a storm.
“It was such a difficult night and I was really just hoping that we could have a wonderful community event of great music and the fireworks, something I felt like we as a community needed and we knew that there was going to be some trickiness with the weather and it was going to be difficult to call,” he said. “I certainly did not expect that we were going to get a monsoon, that was not expected at all, and caused a lot of problems but thankfully everybody’s ok.”
“Pretty disappointing overall … not quite what we expected,” Bettencourt continued.
Rescheduling efforts with the band, who are local to Peabody, are underway, Bettencourt said.
“We love the Lisa Love experience … we’re going to work on rescheduling them because we want them to perform,” he said. “This is something we’ll work together and figure out how we’re going to do this on another night.
Bettencourt said the city would work with the band if any of their equipment was ruined in the storm.
“I know there’s insurance coverage both for the city and for them, they’re not sure there’s some equipment that they’re gonna have to see how it is in the next couple of days but we’ll work with them and we’ll worry about that later,” he said.
Love said she feared some of the band’s sound equipment may be beyond repair.
“I worry about the sound guy … he’s got thousands and thousands of dollars worth of equipment that was compromised so we’ll see what happens,” she said.
Despite the hectic nature of the evening, Love said she was not frustrated with the series of events.
“I don’t feel like anybody knew anything about anything,” she said. “I’m frustrated more with the weather than anybody else.”
