It was a bit of a unique experience this past weekend as a few hundred concert-goers packed Kinetic Park for a drive-in concert raising money for charity.

Saskatchewan artist Justin LaBrash made history in Swift Current on Saturday night playing the first concert in the city while a world pandemic is going on.

Leanne Tuntland-Wiebe, organized and helped fund the concert, and said the well-planned event worked out well thanks to all the attendees abiding by the COVID guidelines.

"There was a lot of regulations to follow from the SHA," she said. "They were keeping pretty tight reins on any kind of drive-in theatre, they didn't have a drive-in concert on their list for us to follow by, so we went by drive-in theatre and they had actually loosened the rope for that, the vehicles could be six feet apart. We maintained at least 12 feet apart because we wanted to make sure our concert-goers were safe."

According to Tuntland-Wiebe over 135 vehicles and over 335 people attended the event helping generate just over $1,340 and 352 pounds of food for the Salvation Army.

"We covered all his costs, (so) everybody could come to the concert free, to forget about COVID for an evening and just to have a good time in the summer with some good music," she said. "Only thing we asked residents that came to our concert was if they could bring a donation to the Salvation Army food bank."

The usual reaction of a crowd attending a concert is clapping in between songs and sometimes during the songs to create a rhythm or engage with the artist, however it was a little different at the drive-in concert.

"The response when your listening to a concert in a car is honking, because the performers can't hear people clapping," Tuntland-Wiebe said. "But the participants were using their car horns and it was just absolutely wonderful."

The event gathered contact information for every attendee just in case of a COVID concern.

"We gave everybody that came a couple of hours of normalcy and that was the goal, to do that," she said. "And I'd love to do another one this summer."

Lumsden's Justin LaBrash will be performing again in the same drive-in format in Assiniboia on August 20.