IMMOKALEE, Fla. — Country artist Ben Allen calls Southwest Florida home, and the former Voice contestant was scheduled to perform with his band this weekend at Harvest Nights Music Festival.
When The Charity Pros, who organized Harvest Nights Music Festival, approached Allen over the summer to perform in November he was excited to play a hometown show.
Allen said he felt lucky the rescheduled dates in January still worked for his band's schedule even a few days after Christmas when he had a heart attack. Since his heart attack, Allen said he's preformed three times.
The Charity Pros originally pushed the festival to January after the hurricanes.
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"They were fortunate that myself and all the other artists, almost all the other artists, were able to transfer the date because that's many schedules...that's a one million shot," Allen said.
However, on Sunday, Allen and the other artists got the heads up. Charity Pros told them they had to announce they were canceling the festival.
Allen said, "Frustration about it for sure because we wanted to be able to go out there for the fans and really represent...for all of our folks here to say that we can be on that stage too with these national artists."
He said he heard the same reasons, the fans were told, as why the concert was canceled.
Charity Pros posted on Facebook that the cancellation was due to, "circumstances beyond the organizers' control"
Allen wants clarity on what exactly happened, and so does Alan Samples who bought tickets for his wife's birthday.
"I hope they come with some sort of explanation...It's just kind of a disbelief like how how does this happen in this day and age, so yeah that's very disappointing," Samples said.
Between the tickets and hotel, Samples lost more than $400, but he has hope the tickets will get refunded.
Allen and his band, who perform full time and don't have another source of income, also no longer get a paycheck, but he added that's the least of his worries.
"So much more concerned about the fans missing the fun and us to perform for them more than I am about the monetary issue," Allen said.
On Tuesday, The Charity Pros said they're working on refunding tickets for fans and asked for patience. If you purchased tickets on January 5 or 6, those were immediately refunded.
