Taylor Swift returning to the Lehigh Valley -- in film version -- tonight. But she has a history here for real

• The film "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" will play in Frank Banko Alehouse Cinemas at ArtsQuest Center in Bethlehem starting at 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 13.
• Tickets, at $19.89 and $13.13 for students, seniors and ages 12 and under, are on sale at Steelstacks.org
• Swift has a long history with the Lehigh Valley and Berks County, including spending most of her early life and performing here

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — In April 2007, a lithe, blond 17-year-old played a concert at the former Crocodile Rock Cafe — a cramped club located in a furniture storefront on Hamilton Street in Allentown.

With her debut album released just six months earlier, even her short set needed to be padded with a cover of Eminem's song "Lose Yourself."

But it also included the two hits she already had charted: "Tim McGraw," which broke the Top 10 on the country chart, and "Teardrops on My Guitar," which had gotten all the way to No. 2.

And she played a song that wouldn't be released for months — one that would become her first No. 1 hit, "Our Song."

On Friday, more than 16 years later, Taylor Swift comes back to that Lehigh Valley with which her teenager self was intimately familiar — having played venues throughout her native Berks County and, later, Allentown Fair.

Swift's return will only be that of her cinematic self: her highly anticipated concert film "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour."

But even that much of a return raises memories of the singer's connections to the Lehigh Valley, even as Swift is the biggest thing in popular music and only getting bigger.

“Taylor Swift is Taylor Swift, so as soon as this [film] came up it was a no-brainer," said ArtsQuest Programming Manager Anthony DeSanctis.

ArtsQuest will offer the film in its Frank Banko Alehouse Cinemas starting at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 12 [a day earlier than planned. It was originally planned for Oct. 13 — Swift's favorite number].

Tickets, at $19.89 [the year Swift was born] and $13.13 [there's that 13 again] for students, seniors and ages 12 and under, are on sale at Steelstacks.org.

"I think I read that the actual Eras concert tour, it was the highest-grossing tour in history, the most successful tour in history," DeSanctis said.

Indeed, the tour broke ticket sales records worldwide, selling 2.4 million tickets in a single day — the most by anyone ever. The U.S. leg of the tour, which ended Aug. 9, grossed $591 million, a record for a female artist.

“I just think this [movie] is a great opportunity for people to see this concert that maybe could not get the chance to see it live," DeSanctis said.

“There’s something about Taylor Swift that people just connect to, you know? It’s amazing just how many different groups, how many different people, how many different audiences she attracts.

“And not just for the concert tour. I think she swept the VMAs [MTV Video Music Awards]. So this is her era.

"That sounds like a cheesy play on words — but yeah, this is her era.”

Living, playing in the area

In an earlier era, Taylor Swift was a regional girl.

She grew up on an 11-acre Christmas tree farm in Wyomissing, Berks County, and attended West Reading Elementary Center and Wyomissing Area Junior-Senior High School.

Among her earliest public performances were at Pat Garrett’s amphitheater off Interstate 78 in Bethel, Berks County.

In a 2018 interview with this reporter, Swift remembered playing at Pat Garrett's.

"Oh, I played there all the time,” Swift said. Then she added, “I played everywhere in Pennsylvania. Anywhere I could.”

Those shows also included playing a free concert at the Fairgrounds Square Shopping Mall in Reading in December 2001 — two years before she signed as a 14-year-old prodigy with Big Machine Records and already had moved to Nashville.

She released her first hit single, "Tim McGraw," in June 2006, and eight months later, on Feb. 8, 2007, played Allentown’s Crocodile Rock Cafe.

“They were nice to work with, very nice," Joe Clark, who owned and operated Crocodile Rock, said in a recent interview.

"I shook her hand. She was standing at stage left, like on the corner between the stage and the bar, for a meet-and-greet. She did a wonderful meet-and-greet.

“She sold out, and she was extremely kind. And everybody was just so easy to deal with."

Clark remembered that “Back then, I was emailing Scott Swift, her father, when he was here in Reading. I said, ‘Hey, you want to join us? — We used to have these old guys we’d have breakfast with every morning; [former Lehigh County Executive] Dave Bausch was one of them.

“It was just a wonderful, wonderful experience."

Asked in that 2018 interview whether she remembered playing Croc Rock, Swift responded, “Of course!”

But asked what she remembered about it, Swift drew a blank.

She was jokingly asked whether she remembered that it was a grungy club.

“I didn’t say that!” the singer said with a mix of shock and smile.

Joel C. Ryan

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AP

A set at Allentown Fair

Two months after playing Crocodile Rock, on April 6, 2007, Swift played a showcase at Sovereign Performing Arts Center in Reading.

Despite having a hit album, she stretched her 15-song set to include covers of "Lose Yourself" by Eminem, "Missing You" by John Waite and "Irreplaceable" by Beyoncé.

The last time Swift played the Lehigh Valley or Reading area was when she opened for Brad Paisley at Allentown Fair on Aug. 30, 2007.

The fair's now-retired marketing director and talent buyer, Bonnie Brosious, remembered that she met Swift six months earlier at her talent agency’s dinner for fair talent buyers in Las Vegas.

"She actually performed for us in the restaurant — unplugged, just her and her guitar," Brosious said in a recent interview.

"Before dinner as the attendees were mixing, she walked over to me to say 'hello' and said she was sent over to me because I was likely the only buyer there that would know exactly where she grew up in Pennsylvania.

"She said she usually tells people Reading, but it was Wyomissing. She was delighted that [Brosious's husband] Carl and I said, 'of course' we knew it.

"As she continued talking to us, we marveled at her poise at age 16 and also enjoyed her classic Taylor exuberance that has become her hallmark.

"When she performed at the fair, she was just as friendly and talked to everyone working backstage."

At the fair, because she was an opening act, Swift's set was shorter — just six songs. She again opened with Eminem's "Lose Yourself."

But in addition to "Tim McGraw" and “Teardrops on My Guitar,” she played "Our Song," which would be released just over a week later and become her first No. 1 Country hit, and “Should’ve Said No,” which also would hit No. 1 and be the last single off her debut album.

A year later, she released her hit "Love Story," which sold eight times platinum and propelled her sophomore album, "Fearless," which sold 10 million copies and stayed at No. 1 for 11 weeks.

She hasn't played the Lehigh Valley or Reading area since.

Charles Sykes

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AP

A place in her heart

Despite being away from the area, it apparently still holds a place in Swift's heart.

Before Swift played two shows at Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field in 2018, she visited her childhood home in Wyomissing.

She posted on Instagram a photo of her standing in front of a small, white barn she used to play in, holding a binder with a photo of herself as a small child in the same location. The photo was captioned “Take me home.”

She also posted a photo of herself in her childhood bedroom with four friends, including fashion model Martha Hunt and Este Haim of the band Haim. That photo was captioned, “Take pictures in your mind of your childhood room...”

That’s a lyric from her nostalgic song “Never Grow Up,” which she played at those 2018 shows.

Before the song, Swift talked about that return to her childhood bedroom.

“I went to the house I grew up in” and “I got emotional when I went into my bedroom, and there’s another little girl’s things in there,” she said.

“It’s not my family farm anymore. We sold it when we went to Nashville. I’ve been thinking about how cool it is to be back where I started writing songs.”

At that show, she told the crowd, “Every year as I come home to Pennsylvania, it gets more and more special."

This past May, as part of the Eras tour, Swift played three more shows at Lincoln Financial Field. There was no public indication she visited the Lehigh Valley or Berks area.

'October is the month of Taylor Swift'

ArtsQuest's DeSanctis said Swift's connection to the area was just one reason the organization was eager to show "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour."

“Because we’re ArtsQuest and we do a lot of, obviously, music-related events, any time there’s a concert film of any kind, we have our eyes on it," he said.

“I know people who told me they couldn’t get tickets for [her concert tour], and I think part of the reason this film came out is because, hey, everyone can get a chance to see it.

“And honestly, as soon as it was announced, I started getting requests, like, ‘Hey, are you going to play the Taylor Swift film?’ So it was a no-brainer, of course.”

And Swift, of course, even apart from her latest tour, is one of the most successful recording artists of all time, selling 55 million copies of her albums and 150 million copies of her singles.

The film has a 2-hour-45-minute run time, and features wide-angle and close-up presentation of the Eras Tour show. There's been no information in which city or cities the footage was shot.

The film was only announced at the end of August, but media reports say it is set to debut to at least a $100 million domestic box office haul on its opening weekend, with predictions as high as $155 million.

That would be by far the biggest opening weekend for any film since "Barbie" opened to $162 million in July and became one of the highest-grossing movies of all time, earning $1.43 billion worldwide.

Michael Jackson currently holds the global box office record for a concert film with 2009's "This is It," at $261 million. It looks like Swift will easily pass the domestic record-holder, "Justin Bieber: Never Say Never," which made $73 million in North America.

The film will fill one of ArtsQuest Center's two screens for entire weekends at a time, playing at 8 a.m. Friday; noon, 4 and 8 p.m. Saturday; and noon, 3:30 and 7 p.m. Sunday.

DeSanctis said distributors are only allowing the film to be played Thursdays through Sundays.

But the film is expected to be such a hit that other studios have moved openings for films so they don't compete with "Taylor Swift The Eras Tour," he said.

“October is the month of Taylor Swift," he said.