YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – The two country music stars headlining this summer’s Y-Live weekend concerts are expected to attract 40,000 people to Stambaugh Stadium over two nights.
Jason Aldean will take the stage Friday, July 10, with Travis Tritt as a guest artist.
Eric Church plays the second night, July 11, with Ernest as guest artist.
Two additional opening acts, one for each night, will be announced in the near future.
Bill Johnson, president of Youngstown State University, and Eric Ryan, president of JAC Management, unveiled the lineup Wednesday.
The football stadium will hold about 20,000 for each concert – 5,000 in temporary seating on the field and 15,000 in the main grandstand.
Y-Live is put together by concert promoter JAC with a goal of being the city’s biggest concerts of the year. It transformed into a two-night event last year, with soft rocker John Mayer and country traditionalist Tim McGraw.
Because both artists in this year’s lineup are part of the country music scene, Ryan expects more people will purchase tickets for both nights than did last year. Both Church and Aldean blend rock and other styles into their music.
This year also marks the return of Y-Live to Stambaugh Stadium. The series began there in 2017 and moved to Wean Park, downtown, in 2022.
Y-Live will take place the same weekend as YSU’s Summer Festival of the Arts, which is July 11-12. The two events will make the YSU campus a focal point of entertainment for three days.
Johnson said having major concerts on campus will elevate the YSU brand.
“What an anchor university does is bring the region, the community, to the campus for things other than sitting in a classroom and listening to a lecture. It can be retail, entertainment and dining,” he said. “This is going to be a festival weekend on July 10 and 11 with the Summer Festival of the Arts and with these concerts. We’re going to have 45,000 people on this campus. That’s a good thing for this university.”
Johnson said the university and JAC intend to make the concerts an annual occurrence at the stadium. With that in mind, they intend to obtain the necessary equipment for the stadium this year and use it repeatedly going forward.
Ryan is also glad to move the concerts back to Stambaugh Stadium.
“From an artist’s standpoint and from a fan’s standpoint, this is where Y-Live belongs,” he said.
Past performers at Y-Live concerts at the stadium loved playing with the massive bleacher in front of them, he said.
“From a fan standpoint, you could not get a better setup,” Ryan said. “And from an artist standpoint, they absolutely loved it here.”
He expressed gratitude to Johnson for his leadership and cooperativeness in bringing Y-Live back to campus.
“We’re going to have a long-lasting partnership in doing this every year [at Stambaugh Stadium],” he said.
Landing the Artists
To book Aldean and Tritt, JAC Management took advantage of their existing plans.
Both artists are playing at Country Concert in Fort Loramie, Ohio, on July 11, which made it easy for them to book the Youngstown date the next day.
Church will also be on the road this summer playing festivals and agreed to the Y-Live date. The artist played Covelli Centre, which JAC operates, in 2012.
Y-Live tickets will start to go on sale next week.
A presale for two-day passes will begin at 10 a.m. Jan. 28, with prices starting at $114.85. Go to YLiveMusic.com or the Y-Live social media pages for information. These passes include a seat for both nights.
A presale for single-concert tickets will take place from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Jan. 29. Prices start at $64.95. Go to YLiveMusic.com.
The general on-sale will start at 10 a.m. Jan. 30 at Ticketmaster.com.
The high demand for parking before Y-Live shows means that just about every lot downtown and on campus gets full.
Because of the scarcity, the lots along Fifth Avenue across from the stadium, which are used for tailgate parties before YSU football games, will be used solely for parking for the concerts.
The pre-show partying that is also in high demand for Y-Live will take place in the bar district, downtown.
Mayor Derrick McDowell said the city’s downtown event director, David Labra, is putting those plans together now and will release them soon.
Preliminary talks include the possibility of using shuttle buses to take patrons up the hill to the stadium, according to Ken Bigley, COO of JAC Management.
“We’re creating a festival-like atmosphere … and we only have so many parking slots,” Johnson explained. “So we’re going to work with the city and do tailgating downtown. It’s walking distance from downtown to the campus, so it won’t be a big problem. But we need all the slots on campus for the Summer Festival of the arts and for concertgoers, the artists and all of their equipment.”
New Albums
Church, a 10-time Grammy Award nominee, has won multiple CMA and ACM awards.
He has released eight studio albums, including his latest, “Evangeline vs. the Machine” (2025), and followed it with a tour.
On Feb. 13, he will release a concert film from the tour, “Evangeline Comes Alive,” as an IMAX film. A 19-track live album, recorded in a Nashville, Tenn., club, will also be released that day.
“This live album is special,” Church said in a press release. “It has been a while since the band and I had played a large club like the Pinnacle. Those two nights were electric. And listening back, the magic of those nights has definitely been captured.”
Aldean will also be releasing new music this year, with the 20-track album “Songs About Us” coming out April 24.
“This album is about real life,” Aldean said in a press release. “The highs, the lows and everything in between. Every song started from a real place, and when it all came together, I realized these really are songs about all of us.”
Aldean has been nominated for five Grammy Awards and has won multiple ACM and CMA awards.
Pictured at top: Jason Aldean.