SHE ROCKS: Meet Ashley Highsmith and Get an Inside Look at How Unforgettable Concert Moments Became a Reality at Providence Park
Photo: Craig Mitchelldyer
With history in mind, large-scale outdoor concerts make their triumphant return to Portland
Providence Park has hosted thousands upon thousands of top-tier sporting events and standout athletic achievements over the decades. These days, it’s the iconic home to the Portland Timbers and Portland Thorns FC, but the stadium has featured all-star games, championship games, baseball, tennis, dog racing, professional football, college football, high school football, and pretty much everything in between since opening in 1926.
On Friday night, however, it was a pair of bands fronted by rock royalty that grabbed the headlines.
Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Dave Grohl and Chrissie Hynde led their respective bands, the Foo Fighters and Pretenders, during an historic evening at Providence Park. Also joined by opener Alex G, the Foo Fighters headlined the first outdoor concert at the stadium in some 19 years.
And it was epic.
But with all due respect to the rock legends taking center stage for such an historic moment, behind the scenes there was an operations all-star tirelessly managing pretty much every logistic imaginable to make sure the first show at Providence Park since 2005 went off without a hitch.
With that, we introduce you to Ashley Highsmith, the chief operating officer of the Portland Timbers and Providence Park, and learn what went into making this moment a reality.
Highsmith first joined the Timbers and Portland Beavers, the city’s Triple-A Baseball team, in 2004 as a member of the ticket sales department before steadily advancing her managerial career over the years. It didn’t take long for those around her to recognize her leadership qualities, and she’s tackled pretty much every job possible at the stadium during the last two decades.
She’s worn a lot of hats over the years, amassing a wealth of industry knowledge from several vantage points, including ticket sales, special events, guest services and operations. Now the COO, it wouldn’t be unusual to see Highsmith donning a construction helmet in recent months as the driving force to not only make the rebirth of outdoor concerts at Providence Park a reality, but make them a smashing success, as was evidenced with this past week’s first show.
The discussions surrounding becoming a regular venue for larger stadium concerts started in 2019 after Providence Park underwent a significant expansion. The project upped seating capacity by more than 4,000 seats on the east side of the venue to form a more complete horseshoe housing that was true to the original plans for the stadium in the early 1900s. Suddenly, Providence Park could reach that desirable 30,000 capacity range that larger stadium tours want, once you factored in the additional seats and field space that could be outfitted with temporary seating.
Highsmith was involved in early discussions with the prospective promoter, Live Nation. Providence Park started getting on people’s radar in 2019 and early 2020, but she says things slowed down during the pandemic. Fast forward to 2022, and things started to really get serious. By last year, the idea of hosting outdoor concerts at Providence Park became a reality, complete with an agreement with Live Nation, basic logistics navigated and interested tours coming to the table.
“In the last two or three years, this has been a constant project of mine,” Highsmith said. “And when I took on the role of COO, it rose to the forefront of my responsibilities.”
Highsmith was relatively new to the organization when the last comparable show occurred at the stadium, but she remembers it well. On June 1, 2005, the co-headlining Def Leppard and Bryan Adams “Rock ’N Roll Double Header Tour” kicked off at then-PGE Park. The basis of the tour was centered around playing minor league baseball stadiums and was a big deal at the time, but nothing remotely close to the scale and complexity of today’s large-scale shows. Later that summer, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts played the stadium as a stop during that year’s Nike Run Hit Wonder, but there had been no shows of significance until this past week.
To ease the labor involved with the stage builds necessary for such shows, Highsmith took the lead on a construction project to retrofit the south end of the stadium to provide for easier stage construction for the outdoor concerts. The project was completed during this past soccer offseason, with Highsmith and others working closely with Live Nation and the city to address the needs of a modern stadium tour.
“It just made it so that when the stage company showed up, all they had to do was build and there was nothing in the way,” Highsmith said. “That was a huge piece for us to get the size stage that we needed for these touring acts.”
With eyes set on becoming a regular stop for large-scale outdoor concerts each year, there would be a lot riding on this first concert at Providence Park.
“We had to prove to everyone that they can count on our venue,” Highsmith said. “Basically, it’s a question of ‘can the house perform the way that we need them to perform so we can trust them for the next show?’
While managing all the required logistics like permits, fire marshals, insurance companies, Highsmith and her group still had to sell touring bands on this idea of an untested outdoor venue option in Portland. There were lots of site visits and meetings that went into the process. Ultimately, Highsmith says the Foo Fighters had a clear interest in being the band to mark the return of outdoor shows to Providence Park, and she couldn’t imagine a better fit to play that first show.
“We had to have a tour that believed in us, that we can do this with a product unseen,” she said. “Foo Fighters came to the table, and we went all in with them about a year ago and said, ‘this is it, this is going to be our first show and we’re going to make this happen.’”
Even then, after all those meetings, all that planning, it still came down to execution as the concert approached. After all, there’s a lot that goes into these shows. The entire field had to be covered in porta-floor, dozens of portable toilets brought in to service thousands of additional attendees. The production setup included a 70-foot-tall stage that took three days to complete. In all, Highsmith was responsible for coordinating the movements and scheduling for some 20 vendors, more than 200 total workers, 16 forklifts and a fleet of semis. From load in to load out, it was about a 13-day window required to prepare the venue for the first show. But in that time, it would instantly become the largest outdoor venue for such events in the state of Oregon.
Everyone involved knew they had one chance to make an impression. Thanks in large part to Highsmith’s management and oversight, the team at Providence Park knocked it out of the park and made that first impression a great one.
“This wouldn’t have happened without Ashley and her leadership,” said Heather Davis, chief executive officer for the Timbers and Providence Park. “She took this project and really made it hers from the beginning and marshalled all the internal resources, got every group in the club working on this in some fashion and worked closely with Live Nation, the city and all of the other resources that a big event like this requires.
“She kept the trains running and absolutely was the creative, solution-oriented leader you need when you do an event like this. She’s really responsible for Foo Fighters coming to Portland.”
Whether you’re talking about spectator sports, participation sports, concerts or any number of the unique gatherings that take place in the area, it’s events like these that really galvanize our community. Those in attendance won’t soon forget being a part of history during that magical night in the heart of the city. With 30,000 jubilant voices and the triumphant exclamation point of fireworks lighting up the sky from the stadium’s rooftop, the city was buzzing and alive Friday. Even if you weren’t in attendance, it just felt like Portland was back being Portland again.
For her part, Highsmith couldn’t even start to register the long hours she and key members of the staff worked on getting this first show off the ground. As a mother of four children, she was working remote double duty throughout the process, joy-sticking not only the logistics of the show, but also that of her family schedule. She says that it not only “took a village” to coordinate the stadium’s first concert in 19 years, but also at home. With assistance from two sets of grandparents and an understanding husband, who was able to enjoy the show with her, she sort of chuckles about managing it all.
“My first job is running a household, sports and activities that the kids still had to get to,” she said. “I still had to coordinate all those logistics as being a mom first, corporate mom second.”
But once the Foo Fighters kicked off their set, she says that all that work, all those long hours, the various accommodations, the obstacles and challenges overcome, all the nerves and anxious moments involved with making sure 30,000 people would enjoy that first concert…it just all went by the wayside.
“Hearing Foo Fighters take the stage, it was all worth it,” Highsmith continued. “Hearing the screaming fans, all that just went away, and it was magical.
“It was working some crazy hours, figuring out things on the fly, but it all came together, and I just couldn’t be more proud of the team at the stadium who, when it was time, really turned it on.”
When asked to rank her favorite or most rewarding events worked at Providence Park over the years, it took her about two seconds to declare Friday’s historic concert as her top pick.
“It’s my No. 1 all-time, 100 percent,” said Highsmith, who has worked thousands of events at Providence Park over the years.
She says the Timbers hosting MLS Cup in 2021 is second, and the Providence Black & White Ball in 2018 would be her wildcard choice as third.
One of the main drivers for Highsmith and the staff was the fact that this was a historic event for the stadium. This show wasn’t your ordinary garden variety; it was going down in the history books – the day Portland and Providence Park became a viable, larger-scale concert destination. There have been some significant concerts at the stadium over the years – including Elvis, David Bowie, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan and Van Halen – but none of them would match the scale and scope of this one.
“We kept saying, this is the next big moment in the history of a 100-year-old building. As staff, we’re putting our name on that.”
As soon as Friday’s show was over, the teardown work began immediately. First up, the production equipment had to be disassembled and loaded up on trucks, as the tour was off to Seattle for the next show. As part of this process, each of the roughly 4,500 chairs on the field had to have zip ties removed, then moved out of the way to make room for the semis, then stacked. The band’s production trucks were on the road by 3 a.m., but work continued through the night and next day, with the staging and flooring eventually being removed.
By Monday, the field was returned to soccer mode, and Highsmith was already scheduling departmental debrief meetings and planning for the next show. In reality, the work has just begun, as Green Day, Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid and the Linda Lindas come to Providence Park on Sept. 25.
As big as Friday’s first show was for Providence Park, it was equally important for the city of Portland. It brings economic impact to the city in many forms, as no longer is it necessary to travel long distances for area fans to see some of these bigger outdoor shows that required larger capacities. Like many of the sporting events Sport Oregon and its bid partners bring to our state, these are the types of events that fill hotel rooms, get people to our local eateries, promote shopping and exploration in our city and state. For the most part, fans have become all-too-accustomed to making the three-hour trek up north to see these types of shows in Seattle. Now, Portland is on the map, and the success of Friday’s show sent a message that Providence Park is an awesome place to hold shows of this magnitude.
More than that, Portland continues to be in a moment when it needs some wins, and for one night at Providence Park, it got just that. Officials indicated that more than 65 percent of the concert ticket holders came from outside Multnomah County. It’s likely that it was the first time many of those people had been to downtown Portland in a while, and the city delivered an exceptional event. Highsmith says that all city agencies, across all platforms, enthusiastically came together to make this an iconic event for everyone involved.
During a more subdued portion of the show, Grohl’s trademark acapella intro to one of the band’s more notable hits, “Times Like These,” had the crowd on the edge of its seat, as it typically does. It’s not a stretch to say that the song’s lyrics serve as more of a universal source of inspiration and reflection, especially to the band’s hardcore fans. So when Grohl soulfully presented the lines “it’s time like these you learn to live again” soon reinforced by “it’s times like these you learn to love again,” it’s hard not to put yourself into the song and the moment, in this case realizing in real time that Portland has begun to live again, love again as a community through memorable experiences such as this.
Photo: Craig Mitchelldyer