30 years of celebration

There have been some terrified dogs, intermittent showers and glitches with sound and lights onstage, but Waynesboro has pulled off its Summer Extravaganza for 30 years with few real hitches.

For 25 of those years, Waynesboro Department of Parks and Recreation Director David Van Covern has been there. 

“When I first came, in 1984, it was several months before the Extravaganza,” Van Covern said. He’d come to Waynesboro from Tidewater, where city-sponsored events routinely drew many thousands of people.

“The staff kept telling me what an amazing event it was.” Van Covern said he looked forward to it, but at the same time wondered about the scale, when compared to what he was accustomed to. 

“I kept thinking, this is just a small city – how big could it really be?”

When the day came, he was amazed.
“It was really one of the best displays of community entertainment and family fun I’d ever seen,” he said.

He remembers the first year when, feeling dead tired, he ended the day listening to Lew DeWitt close out the show.
“It was such a moving moment,” Van Covern said. “That’s when I really understood how special it is.”

DeWitt, a former Statler Brother and author of “Counting Flowers on the Wall,” routinely delivered the closing performance until his final illness.
Other moments have been dramatic, Van Covern said.

“One year, an employee was struck by lightning when she grabbed a microphone during a violent storm in the park. Fortunately, she recovered.”
Quick storms of brief duration are always a possibility in mid-July, but there was only one year when the event was a washout.

“It started raining Friday and poured until Sunday,” he remembered. “The vendors went home and none of the performers set up. There was no way anybody could go on in that downpour.”

The vendors come year after year to sell food, crafts and other specialty items to an upbeat summer crowd.
“It’s a profitable weekend for them,” Van Covern said. 

The performers – those in the tents and those under the lights in the amphitheater – also love coming to Waynesboro.  Some of them, like Staunton R&B singer Bootsie Daniels and Waynesboro bassman Dave Buell, have come off and on since the beginning, with various configurations of changing bands, Van Covern said. Daniels is honored this year with the premiere spot, immediately before the fireworks Sunday night.

“We’ve had a lot of people ask us to bring in nationally-known bands,” Van Covern said, “but in the end, we wanted this to be a showcase for local talent.”
Although the event once featured primarily country music, today’s Extravaganza features all kinds: jazz, acoustic, pop, rock, country and blues.

Performers in the family tents come from all over Virginia and look forward to their yearly trek to the River City.

“I rarely travel with the group anymore,” said Rainbow Puppets founder Dave Messick. “But I always come in person to Waynesboro. I love it.” The group will bring their complete “Dinosaur” show this year, to perform in the tent Sunday.

David Vanderveer, the Chainsaw Comedian, restricts his performances these days while pursuing other interests, but he hauls his chainsaws to Ridgeview Park almost every year to juggle.

“Unlike other outdoor events, it’s in a big tent and has a great audience,” he said. Vanderveer has been coming for years, formerly under the name “Fearless Airborne Conjury.”

Lisa Johnson loved clogging for the crowd as a young girl: she’s now the director of Mountain Heritage Cloggers.

“We love to perform for our home crowd,” she said. “We have time between shows to see other acts and to visit the vendors and the rides.”