For many, Friday Cheers marks the unofficial start of summer in Richmond.

The spring and early summer concert series produced by local nonprofit Venture Richmond is poised to bring its 40th season of programming to Brown’s Island, starting on Friday, May 2 with country-folk duo Chaparelle.

While Friday Cheers and Brown’s Island have become nearly synonymous, the event wasn’t always held riverside. Its original location was Festival Park, the area between the 6th Street Marketplace and the Richmond Coliseum.

On this nostalgic occasion, we thought we’d talk to the people who were there and helped turn it into one of Richmond’s most popular outdoor concert series.

Venture Richmond Event Operations Manager Mavis Wynn started working for Downtown Presents, a precursor organization to Venture Richmond, in the mid-1990s. She describes a more corporate atmosphere than you’ll find at Brown’s Island.

“It was definitely an older crowd,” she says. “We would see folks coming in from their office buildings, loosening their tie, taking their tie off, loosening that top button from their button-down, [wearing] khakis and just having a great time. But we also would get an influx of the younger kids in high school because it was free and open to the public. And at the time, we had some pretty good up-and-coming bands.

Wynn also remembers Richmond-based alt-rock band Fighting Gravity making a particularly big splash. “Fighting Gravity always brought out a large group,” she says. “The stage butted up against the parking deck that’s now at 5th and Marshall, and people would actually pay to park their cars but go all the way up to the roof so they could look over the wall and see the show, even though the only thing they were seeing with the top of the performers’ heads, or sometimes the top of the tent.”

Friday Cheers has since grown to accommodate larger crowds, thanks to its relocation to Brown’s Island. At the same time, reducing the series’ calendar footprint allowed organizers to grow the quality of the lineup.

Venture Richmond Director of Events Stephen Lecky has been with the nonprofit for half of Friday Cheers’ 40-year run. When he started, Lecky saw an opportunity to shrink the schedule to better align with demand.

“When I took over the job, I was evaluating the numbers and saw that in July and August, attendance was tanking, and it was because it was like 110 degrees,” Lecky recalls. “Nobody wanted to be out [when it was] that hot, so we shrunk it to May and June, and we started charging five and 10 bucks to bring in better bands. And it was down on the Island and not obviously at the Coliseum … There’s a generation of people that just associate it with Brown’s Island, which is beautiful, because that’s a great place to see a show.”

“It really has taken on a life of its own once it hit Brown’s Island,” Venture Richmond ​​Events and Booking Manager Sharon Bassard says. “I recall one year before we even had grass or anything on Brown’s Island, it was just a lot of dirt. The staff at the time — a few of us decided to buy some brown or tan tennis shoes. That way, at the end of the night, the dirt could just kind of blend in with our tennis shoes [laughs]… It’s come a long way.”

Cheers to the train horn

The James River flowing just a stone’s throw away. Trains whistling to the crowd’s delight as they pass on tracks that run above the island’s southern edge. The dramatic backdrop of the Manchester Bridge and Riverfront Plaza. Brown’s Island sets a singular scene for live music.

Jazz saxophonist Charles Owens led a trio that opened for Butcher Brown in 2021, in addition to contributing keys to a 2024 performance by local rock group Deau Eyes. “It’s just such a great vibe back there with the river and then the train tracks going over top,” he says. “You’re right in the center of it all in Richmond. It’s a really cool sense of community that it creates.”

Michael York of the Richmond rock group Sleepwalkers, which opened for Rainbow Kitten Surprise in 2017, also values the environs. “I always remember just having the most beautiful backdrop and most benevolent staff,” he says. “Sundown—you can’t beat it with that skyline, with that landscape.”

Mackenzie Roark, the local Americana bandleader who fronted a set opening for cosmic country guitar slinger Daniel Donato in 2024, agrees.

“It just felt so Richmond,” she says. “I love the setting. There’s nothing like playing to a big outside crowd. When the sun is shining or the sun is just going down, and it feels like the start of summer—there’s a magic to it.

Cheers to Mother Nature

Friday Cheers is a rain-or-shine event. Thanks to that policy and Richmond’s generous summertime humidity, fair-weather Fridays do have their counterparts. There’s also the stage’s westward orientation, which provides opening acts with an especially bright spotlight.

Mavis Wynn affirms that “the weather is always something we take in stride. If it rains, it rains. If the sun is out, we’re happy.”

One of Stephen Lecky’s favorite Cheers moments took place at the end of a rain-soaked set by the late “Screaming Eagle of Soul,” Charles Bradley.

“He got a downpour,” Lecky says of Bradley. “We won’t do [shows] in lightning, but it was raining, and that was when we had this clamshell covering over the stage, and the back of the stage behind the backstage area was covered for about 30 feet. Before the show, they were like, ‘Can we move the 50 people that are here to see Charles Bradley backstage?’ We basically turned the band around, and they played to a crowd both in front and behind them. At his encore, he went around and hugged every single human at that concert, because they sludged through an hour and a half of miserable weather.”

Mackenzie Roark escaped with just a quick shower. “I remember it did rain during our set,” she says, “about halfway through for maybe five to 10 minutes… It didn’t damper the experience at all. You’re like, ‘Oh, everyone’s going to run for cover, and it’s going to ruin the whole thing…’ But people are just so happy to be out and seeing live music at this awesome, iconic outdoor venue that has all this history. It was really lovely.”

Sam Reed, vocalist for No BS! Brass Band and an accomplished artist in her own right, had the foresight to enlist a pair of fit, shirtless twins to fan her with palm fronds during her performance as part of 2016’s RVA Music Night. Nevertheless, she sees the setting sun as an honor to ensure.

“If you play that stage at six o’clock during the summertime, the sun is shining directly at you,” she says. “It sounds super uncomfortable, but for me, being who I am—I’m a yoga teacher, I’m a mystic—[there’s] something about being up there as a performer, sharing your gift and staring into the sun. It’s a beautiful experience. You’re hot, you are sweating, but I’ve never been on that stage with a musician who wouldn’t do that again and again.”

Cheers to local bands

The series often pairs a touring headliner with a Richmond-based opening band. For those lucky locals, the invitation to play Cheers comes with valuable perspective on their place in the Richmond music scene, and on their ability to hang with groups that regularly play to large crowds.

Charles Owens points to the validation that being booked for Friday Cheers affords local musicians.

“As an artist, you’re kind of wondering if you’re making an impact on people,” he says. “How much a part of the community are you? Do people think of you when they think of local music? Being asked to play this concert is a great moment for a musician who is wondering about that… It’s a point of positive reinforcement, and it’s a great moment to play on a bigger stage with a big front-of-house system, and to step up.”

Roark felt that same validation upon being invited to perform. “When I got the email from Stephen Lecky asking if we would be interested in playing, it felt like the most exciting thing that had happened in my music career up to that point,” she says. “So many people come out. Never before had we had the chance to play in front of such a big audience and such an attentive audience. It was just so exciting.”

Justin Paciocco leads the Richmond-based, country-tinged rock group Villages, which includes Lecky on drums.

“Friday Cheers holds such a special place in my heart,” Paciocco says. “As a young, aspiring musician in high school, I recall catching bands like Pat McGee Band, Everything, Agents of Good Roots—bands that really inspired and shaped me. So it was a neat, full-circle moment to get to perform last summer with my own band Villages.”

Justin Black, who performs as Saw Black, opened for Tyler Childers in 2018. He describes playing Friday Cheers as one of the best moments in his music career. “I’ve seen so many of my heroes and soon-to-be favorite bands play that stage, and it just felt so cool getting to perform on that stage with some of my best friends for the city I love.”

Jazz singer Kenneka Cook has one of the most extensive Cheers résumés around, having been part of several opening sets and RVA Music Nights. “Performing my music in front of an audience of that size is definitely something that helped me grow as an artist,” she says. “I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunities to perform Friday Cheers and the amazing musicians I was able to meet and work with along the way.”

Cheers for rising stars

Among the series’ most renowned traits—the setting, the timing, the affordability—Friday Cheers’ track record for hosting bands just before they break big may be its defining characteristic. That prescience is no accident, and it’s made for some unbelievable evenings, especially in retrospect.

Paciocco sees Lecky’s knack for noticing talent as key to Cheers’ enduring appeal.

“Even with all of the new shiny outdoor venues and concert series popping up, Friday Cheers will always be a big part of Richmond’s cultural fabric, largely because of Stephen’s eye for bands on the verge of breaking out,” he says.

Lecky appreciates how associating with ascendent bands can make for easy collaboration.

“We don’t get divas,” he says. “We’re getting bands on their way up. A lot of the time they’re just stoked to be playing at a place where we’re going to treat you really well, you’re going to have a really good crowd, you’re going to have a good sound system, the view is amazing.”

He mentions Alabama Shakes in 2012 and The Head and the Heart [which includes local member Tyler Williams on drums] in 2013 as prime examples of bands that would go on to become bigger names.

“We’ve gotten lucky. You hope that these bands will take off. It’s a double-edged sword in a sense, because we’ll announce these bands, and I’ll go check Reddit or Instagram socials, and it’ll be like, ‘I’ve never heard of any of these bands.’ And it’s like, ’That’s okay.’ Come see it, first off. But give it two years. You’ll be like, ‘Wow, that band ended up blowing up.’”

He says their model is not “to bring you established superstars, it’s to bring good music.”

The soon-to-be classic rock group Alabama Shakes was one of his best-timed bookings.

“I can remember hollering to them after their 45-minute set to play covers,” Lecky says. “Most bands play for 90 minutes or so, and they were so fresh at the time, they only had a 45-minute set… I think people who spent $5, or whatever it was to see them, were like, ‘That was the best 45 minutes I could have.’”

Bringing Zac Brown to Brown’s Island in 2009 may be Lecky’s crowning achievement in this respect.

“Relix Magazine used to put out a compilation CD,” Lecky says. “I used to get the magazine, and [Brown] had a song called ‘Who Knows,’ and it slams. It’s not a country song. It sounds like a mix of reggae with a Southern rock vibe. I heard that on a Relix compilation CD and was like, ‘This band is amazing.’ Obviously we booked them in advance, and right as they were coming through Richmond for that show, ‘Chicken Fried’ was number one on the radio, and like 15,000 or 16,000 people showed up.”

Venture Richmond’s Sharon Bassard remembers the influx as somewhat disconcerting.

“People kept coming and coming,” she says. “I’m used to different size crowds, so large crowds don’t bother me, but [there were] so many people on Brown’s Island I started feeling a little uncomfortable… We always work with the Richmond police, and I remember that particular night there was one officer, and I told him, ‘Look, everywhere you go, I’m going with you.’”

Mavis Wynn was instrumental in managing the onslaught.

“We held people off the island for a little while. But when those doors opened, people [were] rushing across the bridge to go straight to the stage,” she recalls. “I had volunteer groups that I was trying to sign in, so we start selling beers as soon as we could. At one point I yelled, ‘Give me until eight o’clock. I just need you to sell the beer tickets, pour the beer. I guarantee you at eight o’clock, it will slack off,’ because I knew Zac was going onstage at eight o’clock. Sure enough, we were slammed… It was a crazy night. And then at eight o’clock on the back half of the hour, it got almost quiet, because everybody was up at the stage. Everybody took a deep breath and said, ‘We made it.’”

Cheers to the memories

Headliner highlights from the last 40 years abound, but a few specific sets stand out as exceptional in retrospect.

Last year’s appearance by legendary hip-hop group Digable Planets is a personal favorite of Mavis Wynn’s. “On a personal level, seeing Digable Planets was probably one of my top five memories of Friday Cheers,” she says. “That’s a group that I grew up listening to in college or even after college. To be able to see them live onstage sounding exactly the same as their—to date myself—cassette-slash-CD sound [was] mind blowing.”

For Lecky, the 2011 performance by Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings was a high-water mark.

“She was a tiny lady,” Lecky says. “She was probably no more than 5’3 or 5’4 and was in sweats, and was very demure and sweet and quiet, just laughing and very unassuming. Then when showtime came, and she’s in that sparkly, Tina Turner kind of dress—pure, raw energy. Magnetic onstage. Just a force. It was about as good as you’re going to get for a performer.”

She also brought people on stage to dance with her. “I think that was something she does at most of her shows, but I still have friends that she brought up who, every year on Facebook memories, they’re like, ‘This was one of my favorite moments: Dancing with Sharon Jones.’” [Jones passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2016.]

Richmond also showed early love for Tyler Childers, who hadn’t yet become the arena act he is today.

“Tyler Childers, before the show, he and his tour manager were like, ‘Tyler does not do encores. That’s not something we do,’” Lecky recalls. “The whole walking-off-stage-and-the-crowd-cheering [thing], he’s like, ‘That’s all bullshit. We’re not doing that.’ Well, they did one that night because they had 5,000 people going bonkers for him. And I remember going up to Tyler at the time and being like, ‘Please. People are used to that at the island…’ And he did it.”

Cheers to staff and volunteers

No concert happens without a few hiccups, much less a series that’s been running for 40 years. Yet performers consistently cast Cheers organizers as smooth operators.

“The whole operation is run really well,” Mackenzie Roark says. “Stephen does a really great job making sure everyone feels comfortable. Even though we were just the openers, [he was] still making sure we felt good and we felt taken care of and had everything we needed.”

Justin Paciocco knows what it’s like to contribute both on and offstage.

“Last summer, I did some freelance work with Venture Richmond working as an assistant concert manager for Friday Cheers,” he says. “It was a neat behind-the-scenes look at how hundreds of pieces and parts need to come together to make a concert a success… They were long, 13-plus-hour days, but it felt good to get out from behind the desk and put in the hard work. On the day of the Villages performance, I pulled double duty, still doing a lot of the behind-the-scenes, unglamorous grunt work right up until the time of our set when I got to switch into rock star mode for an hour.”

“Most of the people that are working this are consistent week to week,” Lecky notes. “They’re consistent from year to year for the last 10 years. It’s the same sound guys, it’s the same stage hands. It’s my same workers with Mavis and Sharon. It’s the same volunteer groups that are pouring beers. It’s the same 15 food vendors. It’s definitely a community of people… Everybody is in it together.”

Wynn describes an all-hands-on-deck approach: “We may have to jump on a beer truck and pull a beer. We may have to jump in and actually sell beer tickets. Luckily, those are some of our biggest problems—just having to jump in for an hour or so to get lines down so that we’re not getting slammed on social media because somebody had to wait in a line longer than they expected to get a beer.”

“I know this might sound really cliché,” Bassard says, “but honestly, with any of the festivals that we produce, my big goal is for people to come enjoy themselves. When I see the smiles and the laughter, I know that we’ve done our job; and that if there’s any fires behind the scenes, we’ve taken care of them. To the attending population, everything seems seamless. I always count that as a win.”

If you’ve ever bought a beer at Friday Cheers, you’ve interacted with a volunteer. The groups that work the taps while raising funds for their respective organizations truly put the “Cheers” in Friday Cheers. It’s also worth acknowledging that the series’ sponsors keep ticket prices down.

“I have 10 to 15 volunteer groups—501(c)(3) nonprofit groups—who pour beer as a fundraiser,” notes Wynn, adding that Venture Richmond makes a donation to the organization. “This event would not be possible without their hard work. Every Friday, rain or shine, cold or 100-degree heat, they show up, they pour beer and they sling ice, and they work for that donation. If it wasn’t for them, I don’t know what I would do.”

She mentions a group of festival assistants led by Doug Herbert who get out there early Friday morning. They put up all the tents. They put up all the signage. They run the electricity. They make sure every tent has lights and every credit card machine has power. They make sure the food vendors get in. They break down everything, and sometimes don’t leave the island until 11:30 p.m. or midnight, when the show is over at 9:30. “Those two entities make a lot of this work,” she says.

“We’ve been thankful for CoStar and Hardywood and NBC-12 and WNRN,” Stephen Lecky adds. “That’s how these tickets can remain affordable, because we have good sponsors that help offset the cost. Venture’s a nonprofit, so we’re not in the business of making money on these things.”

Cheers to keeping it inexpensive

At a time when many concert ticket prices have gone through the roof, Friday Cheers remains affordable with most shows costing $10 in advance or $15 at the gate, and the shows are free for ages 12 and under. Some of the same folks pushing strollers around Brown’s Island or singing onstage have fond memories of attending Friday Cheers as kids themselves. Lecky is living proof.

“I remember going to Friday Cheers when it was at Festival Park near the Coliseum as a high schooler,” he says. “Those were my high school days. We were going to see Agents of Good Roots and Fighting Gravity and Pat McGee Band and Jimmie’s Chicken Shack and Emmett Swimming… Those are my pre-teen, teenage years memories of going to see concerts.”

For Bassard, it’s gratifying to witness major life moments that unfold at—or result from—Friday Cheers. “People will either come up to you, or call the office and say, ‘I met my spouse [or] partner there,’ or ‘I got engaged,’ or ‘He popped the ring, and now we’re bringing our families,’ and ‘Here’s our child.’ That brings a smile to my face and to my heart. I think music is that universal language that transcends a lot of things and is very relatable to everybody.”

Wynn has an especially clear line of sight into the cyclical nature of this series.

“There’s a new generation that has an appreciation for Friday Cheers, and there are also still some of us in the older generation that have an appreciation for Friday Cheers,” she says. “We’re really hitting on all cylinders when it comes to age ranges with this event. Some nights we may get the college crowd. Some nights we’re going to get an older crowd, but then there are some nights that we get all of the generations… There are those who have brought their kids, and now their kids are coming with their friends that are in high school. So it’s a generational thing.

For Kenneka Cook, Friday Cheers doubles as quality family time.

“I have a big family,” she says, “and it became a tradition for us all to get together. They have been so supportive each year I’ve performed. We make a whole day out of it—we get dressed up, hang out [and] go out to eat afterwards.”

Cheers to the community that shows up

Richmond’s passion for live music is particularly evident when Friday Cheers reemerges each spring.

Mackenzie Roark admires how Cheers draws a range of fans that she doesn’t see at other events she’s played. “Festivals are awesome, but festivals are kind of for festival people,” she says. “Friday Cheers has that vibe, but it’s more accessible to everyone. It’s the suburban moms and the random people who aren’t necessarily tuned into festival culture. They’re a part of Friday Cheers, so it makes the audience very eclectic and wide reaching. There’s something very hometown-y about it.”

Sam Reed sees that same quality when she takes the stage on Brown’s Island.

“It’s always a very homey situation, no matter who the headliner is,” she says. “During any set that I’ve played for Friday Cheers, I look out and I see a little bit of everybody. I think it’s a really wonderful representation of the city of Richmond.”

The 40th season of Friday Cheers kicks off on Friday, May 2 on Brown’s Island. Chaparelle and the Jack Wharff Band will perform. Doors open at 6 p.m. and music starts at 6:30 p.m. Individual tickets are $10 and season passes $65.00. Kids 12 and under are free. For tickets and more information, visit venturerichmond.com.