Four Seasons Total Landscaping is hosting a concert, and tickets sold out in 17 minutes
“It probably would have sold out faster but the site kept crashing,” said Sean Middleton, the groundskeeping company’s director of sales.
Decorative lawn boulders and gravel soon won’t be the only rock occupying the grounds of Four Seasons Total Landscaping.
The Northeast Philadelphia company’s industrial chain-link-fenced lot on State Road — which in November hosted Rudy Giuliani, lawyer to former President Donald Trump, and a now-infamous news conference — will transform Aug. 21 into a concert venue for punk artists Laura Jane Grace and Brendan Kelly of The Lawrence Arms.
Not unlike Giuliani’s law license, ticket sales are out of commission. It took all of 17 minutes on Thursday to sell out the concert’s 200 tickets, said Sean Middleton, Four Seasons Total Landscaping director of sales.
“It probably would have sold out faster, but the site kept crashing,” he said.
The company had been entertaining the idea of hosting a concert for a few months, said Michael Siravo, director of operations.
“And once everything started slowly opening up, we figured what better time to do this,” he said.
Middleton said the concert, which will be an “intimate acoustic setup” for soloists Grace and Kelly, was orchestrated by Dave Kiss Presents, a Philly-based promoter who works with venues like Kung Fu Necktie and the former Trocadero.
Reminiscent of the Giuliani news conference, Siravo said the concert will play in front of Four Seasons’ now-immortalized green and white garage door (repainted in November with a fresh coat). A Four Seasons’ truck will be on site for selfies, food and bathrooms available, merchandise for sale from local T-shirt company Philly Drinkers , as well as a couple of surprises — including a possible appearance by a Giuliani cardboard cutout, mailed to the landscaping company by a fan.
Four Seasons would also “love” to collaborate with its adult bookstore neighbors, Fantasy Island, on merchandise, Middleton said.
“It’s a musical experience, but also, I guess for people who — I can’t believe I’m saying this — but who are fans of Four Seasons Total Landscaping, they kind of get to see the ins and outs of it,” Siravo said.
Grace, who has billed the Four Seasons concert as her “most prestigious appearance of 2021,” said in a statement Thursday that “this will be the first and last time Brendan and I will play in front of a landscaping company,” promising a better performance than the November news conference.
On Twitter, she credited Kelly for the idea to play the newly iconic industrial venue.
“It’s truly gonna be the greatest story ever told, folks,” Kelly tweeted. “This time with twice as much landscaping.”
The punk artists’ concert will serve as a trial for hosting future shows, Siravo said. The company also plans to hold a “Surf and Turf Gala” fund-raiser benefiting several ALS patient-oriented nonprofits in September, as well as a premiere of a Four Seasons Total Landscaping documentary, which details the events of the fateful day when Trump’s team set up at the landscaping company — and not the popular hotel chain of the same name. Since its accidental celebrity, Four Seasons Total Landscaping has sold more than $1 million in merchandise touting pithy phrases like “Lawn and Order” and “In Sod We Trust,” has become a tourist destination, and was featured in a Super Bowl commercial.
» READ MORE: Yes, that was Philly's Four Season's Total Landscaping in a Super Bowl commercial
Siravo said he’d love to see Philly natives like Kevin Hart or Questlove one day play the venue.
But the business isn’t looking to become Four Seasons Total Concerts anytime soon, Middleton said, adding that the show is taking place on a Saturday so that landscapers can return to their work on Monday, uninterrupted.
“We have to keep the core business in mind,” he said.
The concert is a “nice change of pace” for the small business that found itself thrust into the limelight of the heated 2020 election, Middleton said.
“I think that this is a little less controversial,” he said. “And also what’s great about this event is that we know exactly what we’re getting into ahead of time.”