SummerDays Are Here Again

Christof Huber and the Open Air St. Gallen festival team have revived Switzerland’s SummerDays Festival and this time it looks as if it’s here to stay.

They started the event on a greenfield site at Jonschwil in 2007, focusing on classic rock acts aimed at an older audience, but scrapped it after losing euro 250,000 in the first year.

After spending 2008 brainstorming, the St. Gallen organisers decided on a switch to Arbon – on the southwest shore of Lake Konstanz – and this time SummerDays sold out its 10,000 capacity in advance.

“There had been a festival on the site in the ’80s and I think the people who went to that came back and brought their kids with them,” Huber told Pollstar.

The acts helping to make it a family occasion on the shores of Lake Konstanz Aug. 28-29 included Deep Purple, Status Quo, Philipp Fankhauser, Uriah Heep, Björn Again, Patrice and Gölä.