Staff file photo / Andy Gray
Troy Sanders of Mastodon, shown here performing at the Covelli Centre in 2022, will be next door at the Youngstown Foundation Amphitheatre on Sunday as part of a co-headlining tour with Coheed and Cambria.

More than 10,000 people will attend shows before the weekend is over at the Youngstown Foundation Amphitheater.

The downtown Youngstown venue will host three shows in four days, starting with a sell-out crowd for Riley Green, Ella Langley, Vincent Mason and Wyatt McCubbin today.

Rock the Rich Center, a benefit for the Rich Center for Autism featuring Lita Ford and The Vindys, is scheduled on Saturday and the weekend ends with a co-headlining tour featuring Coheed and Cambria and Mastodon.

“It’s the first time we sold out a concert there in advance, especially so far in advance,” said Jordan Ryan, vice president of JAC Management Group, which operates the venue. “Truthfully, it’s been sold out for a couple months.”

Tonight’s show is another example of booking country artists on the rise and having their popularity increase even more after the show was announced.

Earlier this month Green and Langley picked up an ACM award for single of the year for their duet on “You Look Like You Love Me.” The pair also won music event of the year and visual media of the year, and Langley also won new female artist of the year.

It will be the kickoff to a busy weekend. Multiple events in a short period of time can cause staffing issues, Ryan said, but It helps that working concerts with nationally known acts is more appealing than some service industry jobs.

At an outdoor venue, big crowds and unpredictable weather can cause wear and tear on the grounds with little time to prep the amphitheater for the next event.

“We’ve been getting ready for this for a month and a half, making sure the place is clean and all the landscaping looks good,” Ryan said. “We do a lot of prep work on the lawn. We aerate the lawn a couple times a year, over seed the lawn every single year to ensure that we’re as prepared as we possibly can be for all the foot traffic that goes on it.

“With that being said, if you get bad weather and you have 3,000 people dancing on the lawn, there’s only so much you can do in preparation. We have a great landscape contractor, and they are ready to pull up any bad areas and re-sod if we need to. We’re hoping that’s not the case. We’ve never had to before. But it’s obviously a very busy weekend, three events in four days, so we are prepared to do that if we need to.”

One perk of multiple shows is that venues often can offset some production costs by splitting them among the different productions. That won’t be the case this weekend, because both Green and Coheed and Cambria/Mastodon are touring with their own lighting and sound.

“They’re traveling with it, so there aren’t really any cost savings for us,” Ryan said. “With the bang, bang, bang, in fact, it’s probably the opposite, because so many employees are going to be on overtime. You just kind of got to bite the bullet from a staffing perspective, but it’s a good problem to have, because we have revenue coming in because we’re busy.”

The revenue doesn’t stop with tickets sold. Ryan said they expect significant beer and food sales for the weekend and are planning accordingly. In addition to the permanent restrooms at the amphitheater, JAC is bringing in additional portable toilets to cut down on the lines.

Ryan said it should be a busy weekend for downtown as well.

“I’m encouraging folks to come early and stay late to hopefully patronize all the downtown businesses that we have, the great downtown restaurants and bars,” he said. “We should break our attendance record on Thursday … As far as the other two show shows go, there are plenty of good tickets available, but they’re both selling really well. Saturday with Rock the Rich Center, The Vindys are just on fire right now, opening up for Pat Benatar and getting rave reviews across the country. And Lita Ford is a guitar hero, right? She’s a legend in the rock community.

“And then you have Coheed and Cambria and Mastodon, and that’s selling really well. We’re going to have over 10,000 people come between those three shows, and it’s going to be great. We’re looking forward to it.”