The Glorious Sons came home and took the stage at Richardson Stadium Saturday, playing to the largest crowd a Kingston concert has ever seen — nearly 14,000 people.
Katie Wong is a longtime fan of the Kingston band and says the atmosphere at the concert was electric.
“It’s The Glorious Sons — they’re never going to let you down. They’re always a great performance,” she said. “Everyone was just really hyped to be there and to see them perform. It was really high energy.”
But fans like Wong say the stadium wasn’t set up to accommodate the thousands of concert-goers. Many spent most of their time in lines for drinks and bathrooms.
“Once the boys hit the stage it was like, almost an hour in the line (for drinks), so they could have had almost twice the amount of beer people there,” said Wong.
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This was the first concert at the new Richardson Stadium and the first on the property since the Tragically Hip took the stage back in 1993.
Leslie Dal Cin, the executive director of athletics and recreation at Queen’s University, says that while Saturday night will be remembered for years, they’ve learned a lot going through the process of hosting the site’s first concert in 26 years.
“I think that there is agreement that if we were to ever do something like this again, we would use some key learnings from this event and apply that to the future,” said Dal Cin.
Dal Cin went on to say that possible improvements for the future include making food, refreshments and portable washrooms more visible and closer to the entrance.
But when asked about any future concerts, Dal Cin says large music events won’t be happening frequently at the stadium because of the proximity to residential neighbourhoods.
“I don’t think we can reasonably expect to do something like this all the time because of the impact it has on our surrounding neighbours,” she said.
Those who live in homes directly behind Richardson Stadium say the noise from The Glorious Sons concert disrupted their weekend.
“It was really, really loud. The house was shaking. I mean, anywhere in the house with windows closed you could hear very clearly, as if you were at the concert, really,” resident Don Chipley told Global News.
Krystal Hawley also lives behind the stadium and said the noise kept her young children awake and she had to deal with concert-goers walking through her yard and jumping the fence to the stadium.
“People were tracking through our backyards. It was a lot of noise and really just disruptive,” Hawley told Global News.
However, not all the neighbours minded the concert noise. Lupka Kuzevski has lived behind the stadium for 54 years and says she always enjoys the stadium activity.
“It was really pleasant — I felt like I was there myself,” said Kuzevski.
Despite the facility hiccups, fans and organizers alike agree that this concert was one for the Kingston history books.
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