Lakes Region Businesses Help Concert Goers to Ride and Dine

A crowd enjoys a performance at the Concert at the Clouds series. (Photo by Rick Croot)

The Great Waters Music Festival, a nonprofit arts organization that holds a popular summer concert series— Concerts in the Clouds at the Castle in the Clouds in Moultonborough—is partnering with local businesses to help concert goers enjoy a unique night out.

Great Waters, based in Wolfeboro, is rolling out a new ride and dine experience for its summer concert series. The Wolfeboro Trolley Company and the Birch and Vine Restaurant in Tuftonboro are collaborating on the new program.

Concert attendees who purchase the $120 ride and dine package will receive a round-trip trolley trip from Wolfeboro, including pickup and drop-off at the Kingswood Arts Center and Taylor Retirement Community at Back Bay in Wolfeboro, including a stop to enjoy a dinner buffet at Birch and Vine before the concert with seats under a tent.

Tickets for the ride and dine experience are limited to 34 people for each concert. This summer’s slate of concerts includes Judy Collins (who last performed at the concert series 25 years ago), and several tribute concerts: Foreigners Journey, The Docksiders Yacht Rock Experience, 20 Ride – A Zac Brown Tribute, The Greatest Love of All/The Whitney Houston Show, and David Brighton’s “Space Oddity.”

The concert series started at Brewster Academy in 1989 and moved to Castle in the Clouds in 2020 (though smaller concerts are still held at the academy), attracting an average of 800 attendees per concert, though some have attracted as many as 1,000.

Classic Albums Live performs at the Concert in the Clouds series. (Photo by Rick Croot)

“As wonderful as that is, it has caused the unintended effect that people so loyal to Great Waters since its beginning that are still in the area maybe don’t have the ability to do the drive from Wolfeboro to Moultonborough,” and miss the concerts, says Joan Myers, a long-time concert patron who became executive director a little over a year ago.

So Myers developed the ride and dine plan with the blessing of her board and Kathy Fairman of the Wolfeboro Trolley Company and Patti Edson, owner of Birch and Vine, were quickly on board as partners. “They are both committed to the area,” Myers says. “We have really impressive business and community support.”

Myers says the phone has been “ringing off the hook” since Great Waters announced the collaboration on May 1. “It’s pretty neat this little town of Wolfeboro has given birth to a summer music festival that has legs,” she says. And as concert attendees can also enjoy views of Lake Winnipesaukee, Myers says the concert experience at Castle in the Clouds is “quite magical.”

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit greatwaters.org.