Noisy Concert Heard Across Phoenixville Area Sunday Night

PHOENIXVILLE, PA — A Schuylkill Township drive-in concert event drove neighbors pretty crazy on Sunday as noise blared into the evening, decibels increasing when the headliner took the stage just before 10 p.m.

The musical blast with laser light show went on for nearly five hours, volume climbing until the headliner hit the stage. Schuylkill Township and Phoenixville police responded to multiple complaints of "loud music around the greater Phoenixville area."

"We have received complaints about this noise before and determined the sound was coming from the drive-in concert venue at the Oaks Expo Center," said Schuylkill Township Police.

One neighbor posted on Facebook that he could hear it from his house in Royersford.

Schuylkill Twp. Police Cpl. McCarthy responded to the complaints by driving to the expo center and talking to the concert host Sunday night.

Police said the host was "incredibly polite and receptive to the complaints." The unnamed man told police that though the concert started at 6 p.m., the group brings the noise up gradually throughout the night "so it's not blasting for 5 hours straight."

This gradual increase hits its peak right around 9:45 p.m. when the headliner takes the stage, the man told police.

This isn't the first of this host's concert events to garner complaints. The man told police that last month was the first concert and they were testing the sound system for the events. He said they decided to turn it down because of the number of complaints they received from that concert.

The host told police a representative from the Expo Center also drives through the local neighborhoods around the venue to check for sound levels in an effort to be respectful of the neighbors.

"I live less than a mile away and after so many hours of it, with it not even being good music, it gets old. Fast.," said another resident on the police department's Facebook page.

The man conjectured that for Sunday night's concert, the humidity and weather conditions created a scenario where the sound traveled much farther than normal. One Royersford resident posted on social media that he could hear it from his house.

"Given that most of our complaints were coming from the area of the high school and the YMCA, our guess is that (the host) was right about this assumption," police said.

The unnamed host agreed to reduce the decibel level of the concert, police said. He showed Cpl. McCathy texts he started receiving back from the artists "who were less than thrilled to have some of the thump removed from their show," police said.

The concert host told police the concerts won’t be back until mid-November and agreed to monitor the sound levels next time.