THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 1, 1996 TAG: 9609010067
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE ADDIS AND BILL REED, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 128 lines
It was Willie Nelson, not Hurricane Edouard, who blew folks away at the Oceanfront Saturday afternoon.
Croonin' and strummin' in his loosely fluid style, the Texas troubadour kept an estimated crowd of 6,000 to 7,000 fans standing as he played old standards such as ``Whisky River'' and ``On the Road Again.''
The concert was part of the weekend-long American Music Festival, which ends Monday with the appearance of The Temptations and The Four Tops.
On hand to catch Nelson's act after a brief snooze on the sand were Sam and Sylvia Parab of Cranbury, N.J., who said the concert was the second they had attended in three years.
Sam, a banker, and Sylvia, a Richmond , Va., native, had bypassed the New Jersey beaches in favor of Virginia Beach, primarily to bask in the sun. A Willie Nelson concert was a bonus, they agreed.
Also on hand was avid Nelson fan Frances Burton, 74, of Virginia Beach, who stood with daughter Margaret Anne Levitin, also a city resident, in a barricaded enclosure near the stage entrance waiting for the country-western star to make his grand entrance.
``I love Willie,'' gushed Burton, who stomped and clapped for most of the show.
Despite winds that occasionally gusted up to 23 mph, Nelson held forth for two solid hours as the surf roiled angrily some 60 yards away, under Edouard's distant influence.
The beachfront concert went off without an apparent hitch Saturday, and the festival will go on as scheduled this afternoon with featured act Huey Lewis and the News, if Edouard doesn't dip nearer to the Virginia coast.
The long reach of the storm's winds did keep officials busy at the Oceanfront. Shrilling whistles punctured the air through the day as lifeguards did their best to keep thrill-seeking visitors from getting more than their knees wet in the deceptively dangerous surf.
``We're trying to keep them from getting waist-deep,'' said Matt McKinney as he regained his perch at 14th Street after a quick dash down the beach to warn some children away from the water. ``Most of them are pretty good about it.
``But if they get knocked down and sucked out, then somebody's gotta go rescue 'em. I did two rescues yesterday.
``Thursday was even worse, 'cause the beach wasn't closed to swimming. We had five neck and back injuries that day alone. I did seven rescues Thursday.''
Most of what had to be rescued Saturday were hats and beach umbrellas, as the die-hards hit the sands for one more day in the sun. Hotel officials and police said the crowd appeared fairly strong for a holiday weekend, especially with the word earlier in the week that Hurricane Edouard might come this way. ``Yeah, it's busier than a normal weekend,'' said Police Department spokesman Lou Thurston. ``But maybe not busier than your normal holiday weekend. The good thing is everybody's having a good time and behaving themselves so far.''
``It's actually a little bit stronger than the last couple of years,'' said Rick Anoia, owner of the Windjammer Hotel and chairman of the Resort Leadership Council. ``We started to get a little scared there for a couple of days, but business has been very good.''
The crowd appeared to be a healthy mix of vacationing out-of-towners, locals who showed up for the music, surfers drawn by the storm-pushed waves and college students looking for a long weekend of partying before their professors start getting really serious about things. ``Well, it's working out about even for us,'' said Martha Biggart, laughing as the wind tried to toss her straw hat away. ``We can't go in the water, but then we found out Willie Nelson was playing six blocks down the street from our hotel.''
``We made these plans a month ago,'' she said, nodding to her husband, Bert, who'd shared the wheel on their overnight drive from Ohio. ``To be honest, we'd been so busy we hadn't heard much about this hurricane. We heard something on the news on the way down and just decided to keep on drivin'.
``But Willie's like my all-time favorite, so even with all this wind we're going to have a great time.''
The Biggarts said theirs was something of a vacation in reverse: Their two college-aged children were home all summer, so the couple kept close to home to have time with them.
``Now they're back in class, and and it's Mom and Dad's turn to play,'' Martha Biggart said, laughing, as they tucked their chairs into the sand a hundred feet from the 5th Street stage, the venue for the major acts of the music festival.
Willie Nelson seemed to be the last thing on the mind of Tareek Chalmers, who was using a video camera on the Boardwalk at 22nd Street as a none-too-subtle come-on to the young ladies he was hoping to meet. He would tape them and offer to show them how they looked on playback on the small, built-in screen. Then he would offer to meet them later at a nightclub.
The best he was getting was ``a lot of maybes,'' he said. ``It'll work sooner or later. It usually does.''
Chalmers said he and three friends from the University of Maryland had arrived Saturday morning, hoping for one long, final weekend of fun before hitting the books in earnest.
``We were down last year, too, and had a good time,'' he said. Labor Day weekend at Virginia Beach remains a strong draw for college-age African-Americans, he said. The street violence that broke out a few years back is ``like history.''
``Nobody even talks about that. I met some older guys once at a frat party who were talking on about it, war stories and all that, but nobody I know even cares about that.
``We're just here to have fun, meet some girls - if we're lucky.'' ILLUSTRATION: DAVID B. HOLLINGSWORTH
The Virginian-Pilot
Color
Willie Nelson plays two hours worth of old favorites Saturday for an
Oceanfront crowd estimated at 6,000 to 7,000.
DAVID B. HOLLINGSWORTH
The Virginian-Pilot
Sam and Sylvia Parab of Cranbury, N.J., catch a few rays while
listening to the Atlanta Rhythm Section perform Saturday as part of
the weekend-long American Music Festival at the Oceanfront. It's
the second time in three years the couple has attended the festival.
ON STAGE TODAY
Orleans: noon
(17th Street stage: free)
Huey Lewis & the News: 2 p.m.
(5th Street stage: $10)
The Rascals: 6 p.m.
(24th Street stage: free)
The Guess Who: 8 p.m.
(17th Street stage: free)
KEYWORDS: AMERICAN MUSIC FESTIVAL by CNB