Bob Dylan once played at Tussey Mountain. Here’s a look back at the venue’s ‘surprising’ acts
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Before digital tickets were preferred to paper tickets — back when $25 could afford most concerts — Tussey Mountain built a reputation as one of Centre County’s top music venues, boasting beautiful views that attracted national acts such as Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson.
The heyday of the outdoor amphitheater mostly involved the 1990s, but a few highlights spilled over into the early 2000s. The venue featured other musicians like Jefferson Starship (1994), Kansas (1995), Def Leppard (1999), Ted Nugent (1999) and Good Charlotte (2000).
“There were a lot of bands that played here. It was surprising,” said Josh Lincoln, a 1998 Penn State graduate who attended the Dylan concert and now serves as a managing partner of Tussey’s ownership group. “This was really built up, and then it just kind of faded away from that.”
Those concerts, overlooking the sunsoaked mountains of Happy Valley, left lasting memories on a generation of residents and students. If it rained, the crowd simply stood and the bands played on — like in the case of Dylan on April 27, 1997.
That Sunday night started off bright and sunny before the skies darkened and a light rain turned into a downpour right before Dylan took the stage. Dressed in a black-gold iridescent coat and a polka-dotted foulard around his neck — looking like a cross between a “Mississippi riverboat gambler and a British rocker from the early ‘60s,” the CDT reported — the then-55-year-old Dylan embraced the weather.
“He stayed out there,” legendary music promoter Rich Engler recalled in March. “And the stage did have a roof but, depending on how the wind blows, he could get a little bit wet — and he did get a little wet. But he was a trooper and he stayed in there, hung in there, and did a great job.”
Engler and Lincoln reflected on the Dylan concert in March, as they announced plans to recapture some of Tussey Mountain’s musical magic by starting a monthly concert series titled “Happy Valley Music Series.” That kicks off 3 p.m. Sunday with The Wailers, a reggae band formed by former members of Bob Marley and the Wailers. (General admission is $40 and can be purchased at iTickets.com.)
Eventually, ideally, the pair would like to see national acts return to Tussey. But, in the 1990s, there was no shortage of star power in the Boalsburg area.
In 1995, hundreds of concert-goers parked their cars along state Route 144 to get to the sold-out Tussey Mountain Amphitheater for Rusted Root — a western Pennsylvania band that hit it big after playing at Penn State fraternities the year before. As many as 10,000 were in attendance for the group that opened for the Grateful Dead and Sheryl Crow.
Tickets cost $15.75, and one attendee complained to the CDT “about paying all that money.” Founding band member Liz Berlin told the CDT that Tussey’s hillside setting was ideal. “I like it better than I ever liked Players,” she said, referring to the venue now known as The Basement Nightspot in downtown State College, “just because it’s outdoors.”
Willie Nelson came a year later with slightly more expensive tickets that started at $20 — a buy-one-get-one-free promotion was in effect for several weeks — and the CDT estimated a crowd of about 3,500. Nelson ended up playing a two-hour show, twice as long as was typical at the time.
“This is a fantastic show,” Tussey’s general manager told the CDT at the concert. “He’s got the crowd mesmerized.”
Added a 16-year-old girl from State College: “We came because it’s one of those memory things, to say I went to a Willie Nelson concert.”
In 1999, Def Leppard and the Beach Boys both played in front of large crowds. And Ted Nugent’s July 1999 concert started at just $25. But an alternative rock music festival in October 2000 didn’t seem to meet expectations.
Penn State’s student newspaper The Daily Collegian reported that only 1,400 tickets were sold for “Revfest 2000,” the festival that drew 10 or 11 national touring bands such as Good Charlotte, Wheatus, Nine Days, P.O.D. and Dexter Freebish. The headline read, “Alternative rock festival disappoints many.”
Quoted concert-goers included a State College 15-year-old who labeled it just “OK,” and a Penn State junior who said, “It’s not the best concert I’ve been to, but it’s definitely one of the nicest places for a concert.” The article did not clearly explain why it was so disappointing.
Jefferson Starship, who played in 1994, returned again to play at Tussey Mountain’s Rock ‘n’ Rib Fest in June 2002. But, by 2003, Tussey Mountain had begun eschewing national acts in favor of local bands.
Around that time, a change in ownership occurred at Tussey. And Engler, the promoter responsible for many of the mountain’s biggest acts, was told to stop calling. The new owners weren’t interested. “No, seriously,” Engler recalled. “They were almost mean.”
It wasn’t until Lincoln’s investment group, the West Chester-based Symmetrical Investment Group, purchased the property in 2021 that the mentality changed. Few upgrades have occurred to the amphitheater since those ‘90s glory days — and Lincoln knows improvements need to be made to leave the kind of marks and memories that Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan created more than 25 years ago.
But, for now, those musical memories are still fondly held by those who experienced them.
Like those in the sold-out crowd of 7,500 who in 1997 watched Dylan groove to “Along the Watchtower” and bought souvenir ballcaps that read, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.” Despite the rain, Dylan performed for two hours — including a three-song encore that appropriately concluded with “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.”
And, per Engler, even Dylan was a fan of Tussey Mountain.
“The venue is just great; it’s second to none, I’ll tell you,” Engler said. “It’s perfect. And every band that played here, too ... I mean, Bob Dylan didn’t say much, but he said (mumbling Dylan impersonation), ‘Hey man, oh, I like it.’”
