‘Hicktown’ is coming to this town

Aldean is a rising star in the country music industry; his latest album has gone platinum with three chart-topping hits.
"Jason Aldean—I've been listening to him since high school," said sophomore criminology and criminal justice major Logan Clark.
Clark plans to buy tickets to the show along with some of his fraternity brothers.
"I'm a country kid," he said.
Tickets for the April 10 concert will go on sale Friday, starting at $24.75. Country musicians Luke Bryan and Ash Bowers will also perform during the show.
This concert comes in the wake of two cancelled performances for ISU.
The first concert to fall through was a planned 2009 Homecoming R&B show last October featuring Babyface, Fantasia (of American Idol fame) and After 7. The acts pulled out of the gig shortly before the performance, and the concert was cancelled.
A similar situation occurred earlier this semester with comedian Howard Moore. 
Moore, whose promoter described him as a cross between Dave Chappelle and Eddie Murphy, was booked for a performance at Tilson Auditorium in April. However, even after contracts were signed, the comedian pulled out, leaving ISU in a lurch.
"I wish I had an answer. They just stopped communicating with me," said Jennifer Cook, Hulman Center assistant director of business and marketing.
Calls to Howard Moore's publicist for comment on the concert withdrawal were not returned.
"They obviously decided not to play our venue," Cook said.
Being rejected by Babyface is one thing; however, being turned down by Howard Moore, an entertainer with exactly one video on YouTube, seems to emphasize the difficulty of bringing performers to ISU.
Cook said this difficulty is mostly due to ISU not having a reputation as a viable concert venue.
"Right now, we don't have a history," Cook said.
Because the history isn't there, artists worry the sales will be low and are less likely to take a risk on a performance.
This creates something of a catch-22 for those in charge of booking for ISU's concerts. Hulman Center can't book big-name artists unless they can prove a concert will sell well and can't book a concert that sells well without a big-name artist.
Kayla Henderson, junior elementary and special education major, said the Jason Aldean concert will be the first she's been interested in attending since she started at ISU.
"It's more popular country artists," she said. "Most of the time they get people that really aren't that well known."
However, the last few years have not been entirely without successes. Both John Mellencamp in 2007 and Jerry Seinfeld in 2008 packed their respective venues.
Last April's concert by Christian rock group Skillet drew a small crowd (over 1,000 in attendance), but didn't reach the numbers they'd hoped it would, Cook said, possibly because of it's niche appeal.
"Everyone has their own preference, so it's hard to please everyone," Cook said.
However, Cook is hopeful that a successful Jason Aldean concert could turn it all around.
 "I'm very hopeful this country show will sell really well, and we will look like a viable music venue again," she said. "I'm just hoping this will be the catalyst that will really start things going."