PRAIRIE GROVE (KFSM) -- Country music star Luke Bryan will make a stop in Northwest Arkansas as part of his Luke Bryan Farm Tour 2016 later this fall.
A location manager for the tour visited the area in March 2016, looking for a field that would be large enough to host the size of crowd a Luke Bryan concert attracts.
For Nathan Ogden, a Prairie Grove farmer, the opportunity to welcome the country concert fell into his lap after chatting with a friend.
"[Luke Bryan's location manager] was looking for a place to have a concert," said Ogden, whose friend then asked him if he had anywhere to show the group. “I said, if you are talking about having a throw down. I got all kinds of places to look.”
The location manager was about to scrap plans for a Northwest Arkansas location after other farm options weren't the right fit, Ogden said.
“They pulled right through the gate and [the location manager] jumped out of the car," said Ogden. "He said ‘This is the spot!’ He says 'I thought we were going to have to scrap Northwest Arkansas because everything I’ve looked at doesn’t work and I’ve got to get back out of town. We’ve got a concert tonight I got to get back to.'”
After about a month of discussions, people with Luke Bryan’s tour chose Ogden’s Ranch in Prairie Grove for their concert location. About 20,000 people will descend on the area for the show, along with an estimated 7,000 cars.
Ogden said the tour will handle most of the labor "all I do is put in two gates, take down 300 feet of fence, put it back when they’re gone and mow it a week before they show up."
Ogden took 5NEWS on a tour of the 120 acres that will be used for the one night show, which is a bit larger than the minimum 90 acres required to host a venue of this magnitude.
“I guess me being the age I am, it’s the equivalent of when I was a teenager or 20 something, having George Strait out here I guess," said Ogden, when asked about the experience. "So it’s pretty cool, pretty cool deal.”
Tickets to the Oct. 13 concert go on sale Friday, June 24, with prices starting at $49.