ThunderFest Canceled

Organizers of the ThunderFest music festival scheduled for Aug. 20-22 in Evansville, Ind., announced July 30 the event has been scrapped.

Festival chairman Tom Sawyer said lack of a confirmed headline act, no sponsorships and the down economy made going through with the event a bad idea.

“Our only prudent approach was to budget an event that we were pretty confident we weren’t going to lose money on,” Sawyer told the city’s Courier & Press. “We looked at several possibilities, and, one by one, every one turned out to be too risky.”

The festival was to take the place of the annual Thunder on the Ohio speedboat race that was canceled this year because of escalating costs.