Goin' to the Fair

County fairs have wrapped up for the most part around the region. They are a great opportunity for the community to come together, to highlight achievements and provide windows into one another’s lives.

The fair has an element of torture for some. I don’t mean the anticipation of its approach or the anxiety that some fungus will spoil a prize pumpkin. I mean an annually renewed realization that one has been irreversibly ear-wormed.

A 2008 article in the Northern Express explains how an advertisement for the Northwest Michigan Fair spread like wildfire (‘went viral,’ in newspeak) in the late 1980s. The very creative television advertisement included a jingle that was also frequently, for years, rebroadcast over FM radio.

The fair, once held right in the heart of Traverse City, was relocated 5 miles south of town in the early 1970s. The relocation and growth of other summer events in the area led to flagging fair attendance and troubled finances. Rick Coates, then a newly hired fair manager, took it upon himself to right the ship, partly with a marketing campaign.

Coates pitched his ad concept first to the local ABC affiliate, who directed him to the NBC affiliate, where my mother worked. He envisioned a local farmer and auctioneer he knew wandering by various regional landmarks with a cow on a leash, telling anyone who asked he was “goin’ to the fair.”

Dave Williams, the local station’s commercial producer, took on the task of creating something from Coates’ vision. The result was a riff on the painting “American Gothic” (Grant Wood, 1930), with a member of my aunt’s dance revue dressed in gothic drag playing a banjo ditty and a taller fellow holding a pitchfork. Both sing “goin’ to the fair” as a refrain to a dangerously catchy tune.

“When the commercial first appeared on TV 7 & 4 it caught on literally overnight,” said Coates. “It was so popular that the other stations began running it for free.”

The ad won awards and was shown to 2,500 attendees in Las Vegas as part of an awards dinner. Fair committees from other states contacted Williams asking for commercial production contracts.

Later my aunt, who was a local singer/performer and recently retired from instructing at Interlochen Center for the Arts, worked with our family friend Larry Avery to produce a higher fidelity version of the jingle for radio play. 20 years later, in 2008, TV 7 & 4 (now UpNorthLive, after an ABC-NBC regional merger) held a contest for musicians to perform the still-popular song.

“I think we have created a musical virus that there is no known cure for,” said Williams.

The original ad can still be found on internet video streaming platforms, but beware. It only takes one listen and you’re liable to end up like me—with a banjo ditty and a four-word refrain looping endlessly through your head any time your thoughts stray anywhere near a county fair.