At the same time they announced the biggest headliner to grace the stage for the Downtown Country Jam, leaders of Shellabration Inc. reported that their annual summer classic rock concert will not be held this year.

“Our team is incredibly bummed,” said Jim Reed Jr., the president of Shellabration Inc.

“After months of making offers and inquiries to scores of artists across various rock time periods and genres, we are in the unfortunate position of having to push on this year’s Shellabration 2025,” he added.“We knew that this day would one day come. Classic rock has aged before our eyes over the past 23 years with a high percentage of artists that remain on our short list now between 75 and 80 years of age. With artists choosing to play fewer dates, not touring at all or even passing away, the writings been on the wall for some time that this day would come.”

Reed said that the reduction in available tour dates has driven the booking prices “through the roof.”

He said shows that used to cost $150,000 now cost between $200,000 and $250,000 for an outdoor concert during fair and festival season. That, he said, is effectively pricing smaller communities like Fort Dodge out of the market.

Another challenge, according to Reed, is that artists are teaming up to do concerts together as a package deal. That allows them to command even more money than they can get on their own.

“It complicates life since we, Shellabration, only need one $100,000 to $150,000 band or lower, not two packaged together,” Reed said.

Shellabration concerts have been held every year since 2002, except for 2020, when the COVID pandemic forced a cancellation. Performers have included Three Dog Night, Styx, Chicago, Little River Band, REO Speedwagon and Rick Springfield.

“The hardest part is not wanting to let anyone down,” Reed said.

“We know that this announcement is going to elicit a ton of feedback and suggestions from the public, including specific artists to target, to genres people would like to see us bring, to staging multiple day events and more,” Reed said. “We love that people are interested and invested in what we do. No one is more disappointed than our team.

“That said, we exhausted all financially viable options based on years of experience and access to market specific data and information that most people lack,” he added. “There are lots of great bands out there that I personally love. I also know that they don’t have the broad-based name recognition and appeal that it takes to drive enough ticket sales to cover their asking price and the total expense to produce an outdoor show here in Fort Dodge.”

The Shellabration Inc. team intends to keep working to put on a concert in the summer of 2026.

“While the trendline and list of financially viable artists will continue to get shorter as prices escalate, so long as there are still rock and roll bands out there that could theoretically work financially, we’ll keep making offers,” Reed said.

“Live classic rock in our price range may be inching closer to extinction, but it ain’t dead yet,” he said.