(WGHP) — It started with an electronic message.
It ended up being what could be the largest and most successful benefit concert in North Carolina history.
“So it was either the night of or the morning after Hurricane Helene hit, I got a message from Chris Kappy, who’s Luke Combs’ manager. And it was a group text with Luke and a bunch of his other team, the promoters, the booking agents,” Michael Brammer told me.
And it read something like this:
“Hey, we’ve seen what’s happened in North Carolina or we’re seeing what’s unfolding in western North Carolina. We’ve got to do something. Just put your thinking caps on. No idea is a bad idea. Luke wants to do something.”
If you’re unfamiliar with country music, Luke Combs is one of that genre’s new superstars. Among many accolades, he was the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year in 2022. He’s also a North Carolina native: born in Huntersville, grew up in Asheville and attended Appalachian State University before dropping out to pursue his career and moving to Nashville.
His friend, Michael Brammer, grew up in Winston-Salem and is now the chief strategy officer of the company his father, Jim Brammer, founded: Concert Stuff Group.
Concert Stuff Group is based in Mocksville, NC just southwest of Winston-Salem. Through several of its 9 subsidiaries, including Special Event Services (SES), this company has provided sound, lighting and staging for all of Combs’ concerts since 2016. Another subsidiary, Musical Coaches, even provides the motor coach Combs uses on tour.
The group text he received from the Combs team got Brammer to thinking.
“It just stuck in my head, this picture of the stage in the middle of the stadium and hundreds of thousands of people around it,” Brammer said.
The vision was not that far off.
A little more than three months earlier, Concert Stuff Group had provided the staging and other services for George Strait’s concert at Texas A&M’s stadium in College Station, Texas.
The more than 110,000 people who attended that event made it the largest single-ticketed concert in United States history.
“I said, ‘Guys, this stage (the one Strait used) is sitting in our yard in Mooresville,’” Brammer told me. “’Why don’t we see if we can get Bank of America Stadium?’ And it was originally met with some opposition like, ‘Maybe it’s too cold, too late in the year to go outside. Maybe we should shoot for an arena.’ But it became apparent that everything was linking up for this to be the solution.”
Then there was the question of the date. Brammer went to the Carolina Panthers website and noticed the team was away for two consecutive weeks.
“Morgan Wallen was playing his show in Bank of America on the 20th of October,” Brammer said. “I knew that the field would already be covered with the protective equipment for a stage. So it all came together like, ‘Hey let’s go a week after Morgan! A lot of stuff will already be there!’”
So Brammer and his team set up in Charlotte the very stage George Strait used in Texas, and the Concert for Carolina happened the night of Oct. 26. In addition to Combs, it featured fellow North Carolinians Eric Church and James Taylor along with Keith Urban and Cheryl Crow among others.
At this writing, they’re still counting the money, but so far the total raised is more than $24 million which is being split among several different charities focused on storm relief in the western part of the state.
And everyone involved with producing the event donated time and services.
“(Concert Stuff Group) didn’t take a dollar. The Panthers didn’t take a dollar. Luke Combs didn’t take a dollar. Eric Church didn’t take a dollar. No money from that show went to anybody else but the state of North Carolina,” Brammer told me.
And it started with a simple electronic message.
The Concert Stuff Group and its subsidiaries employ a little more than 500 people. It’s among the largest companies of its type in the world. It got its start in –of all places—Winston-Salem, North Carolina and maintains a strong presence in the Piedmont Triad.
