Mother Nature reached into her bag of tricks and threw out almost everything but the kitchen sink in the Southland.
On Friday and Saturday, the first two days of the inaugural Country Fest in Tinley Park, there was thunder, lightning, heavy rain, damaging winds, heat and humidity, and some fog tossed in for fun.
But at times there was also some sunshine at the 80th Avenue Metra Station and for a few hours Saturday night, there was some pleasant weather.
Organizers had to temporarily close the festival down a couple of times and were crossing their fingers for the third day on Sunday to have decent conditions.
“When we decided to do this, we said the worst scenario was that we would have major thunderstorms blowing the tents down,” said Tom McAuliffe, whose family formed Family Festivals, Inc., about its first event. “I said, well, that’s not going to happen. We’ll get a little rain but won’t have to shut down. The best scenario was no rain. Guess what we got? The worst possible scenario.”
The Fest was able to open for Friday night’s fireworks and a headlining concert by Ashley Walls. Even though the fest was shut down for a few hours on Saturday, the headliner, Eric Chesser, was able to play as well.
The Friday storm hit fast and furious, damaging tents and knocking down portable restrooms as if they were bowling pins.
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Some social media reports said the Fest would be canceled for the rest of the day, but that was inaccurate as it opened back up at 7 p.m.
Shannon McAuliffe, Tom’s daughter and an official for Family Festivals, Inc., said that online ticket sales started to spike.
“Oh, my gosh, it was insane – they were flooding it,” she said. “The line was so long to get in. People came to watch the fireworks and it showed that they wanted to come.
“The village, the mayor, the fire chief and the chief of police all came together to help us get back open.”
In the hours that it was open, thousands of festivalgoers were able to listen to music and sample food including ribs from businesses from all over the world.
There was a family area with rides and a slide.
Nine-year-old Noah McPheeters and his 6-year-old sister, Faith, were two of the first to use the slide on Saturday.
“This is good, clean family fun for the kids,’’ their mother, Jaclyn said.
Their father, Mike, delivered some of the drinks to the fest and thought he would get some family time in as well.
Country Fest was similar to Tinley Park’s Ribfest, which the village sponsored in 2023 and 2024 but stopped running it in 2025. It got to be too much with all of the other projects the village was handling, according to Mayor Michael Glotz.
Alsip’s Eric Hanck-Tierney, who was dressed in an American flag shirt, said a few years ago he won a rib-eating contest.
“I love ribs,” he said. “I had 12 ribs in two minutes, then I had another three in a tiebreaker and won. Fifteen in three minutes.”
Oh, and prior to the contest, he said he had consumed two racks of ribs.
His choice of ribs for lunch on Saturday was from Big Show BBQ out of Kansas City.
“The sauce and flavor are really good,” he said.
His wife, Samantha, was also festively dressed in red, white and blue and the 4th of July and 250th anniversary of the United States meant a lot to her.
“I love America,” she said. “And do you want to know why? My mom and dad (Janis and Patrick Tierney) adopted me. They came to Thailand and picked me up and came here.”
She said that she liked the change from Ribfest to Country Fest.
“That’s amazing because there are a lot of people who like country music,” she said. “This is a good idea. I love it.”
There was a lot of hard work that went into organizing the festival and the weather made it a rollercoaster of emotions for the McAuliffe family, but Shannon is looking ahead to 2027.
Glotz said in June he didn’t foresee another Fourth of July festival to take place in the village but the family said it wanted to put on some type of festival again.
“We really want to do it again next year,” Shannon said. “I think the people had a lot of fun this year.”
Jeff Vorva is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
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