Britnee Kellogg, Alexis Lorene Brought Country Storytelling to the Levitt
Levitt at the Falls, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, June 13, 2026
Saturday night at Levitt at the Falls had the kind of Sioux Falls summer ease that makes free outdoor music feel less like an event and more like a weekly ritual. People came early, found their spots on the lawn, drifted toward food trucks, and let Falls Park West do what it does best.
By the time music started at 7 p.m., the night had already settled into that familiar Levitt rhythm of lawn chairs, kids moving through the grass, conversations softening as the first songs began, and the smell of dinner from Valentino’s, Double D BBQ, Willy’s, and Street Sweets hanging around the edges.
The night’s lineup paired two artists who both work from the same essential country truth: songs land harder when they sound lived in. Sioux Falls native Alexis Lorene opened the evening with a songwriter’s presence and a voice that pulled from rock, country, and blues without treating those styles like separate rooms. Later, Britnee Kellogg stepped in as the headliner, bringing the kind of polished country confidence that comes from years of chasing the bigger stage without losing the personal story underneath it.
A Sioux Falls Voice Starts the Night
Alexis Lorene came into the night already carrying the advantage of hometown familiarity. The Levitt’s own event listing describes her as a Sioux Falls native with a warm, genre-blending acoustic sound, and that fit the way she handled the opening slot. Her set leaned into the songwriter/storyteller lane, but not in a delicate coffeehouse-only way. There was more grit in it than that. The songs moved between original rock and country, with a blues vocal style giving the performance its darker grain.
That blues edge helped keep the set from becoming too clean around the corners. Lorene has the kind of voice that suggests the backstory before she explains it, which is exactly what you want from a songwriter opening an outdoor country night. The melodies had that small-town Friday-night feeling, but the phrasing gave them some road dust. She did not sound like someone trying to imitate Nashville from a distance. She sounded like someone turning local miles, personal scenes, and hard-earned observations into songs with a front-porch spine.
There is also something fitting about an artist like Lorene playing the Levitt. The venue’s Share the Stage structure gives local and regional artists a chance to stand in front of crowds that might not have found them otherwise, and Lorene made good use of that space. Her original songs worked best when the story behind the music and the shape of the melody felt tied together, almost like she was inviting the crowd into the room where the song first happened.
Away from the stage, Lorene also teaches line dancing at Pave every Thursday night at 8 p.m., which makes sense after seeing how naturally she fits into the live-music ecosystem of Sioux Falls. She is not just passing through the local scene. She is part of its weekly machinery, one boot step and one lyric at a time.
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The Levitt Lawn Does Its Job
One of the best parts of a Levitt night is that nobody has to choose between “concert” and “community gathering.” The design of the space lets both happen at once. Happy hour at JJ’s at the Levitt started at 6 p.m., giving the evening a long runway before the music began. By showtime, the lawn had already become a patchwork of friend groups, families, casual listeners, and country fans who knew exactly who they came to see.
That setting matters for a lineup like this because both artists rely on connection rather than spectacle alone. Lorene’s opening set needed space for stories to breathe. Kellogg’s headlining set needed room to turn personal material into something bigger and more communal. The Levitt lawn gave both artists that kind of room.
There is no bad mystery to solve here. Free outdoor music in downtown Sioux Falls works because it lowers the barrier between artist and audience. People who might not buy a ticket for a new artist will still sit down on the grass and listen. Kids who might not know the difference between a touring country singer and a local opener still absorb the feeling of live music happening right in front of them. That kind of night builds listeners quietly.
Britnee Kellogg Brings the Bigger Road to Sioux Falls
When Britnee Kellogg took over the stage, the night shifted from local intimacy into touring-country lift. Kellogg has the kind of résumé that gives a performance some built-in momentum. She has been through American Idol, released a full-length album in 2024, and recently gained national visibility through CBS’ The Road, the competition series built around emerging musicians performing as opening acts for Keith Urban at venues across the country.
Kellogg is not presented as someone waiting for a story. She already has one. Her music is built around resilience, motherhood, ambition, disappointment, and the stubborn decision to keep moving anyway. The Levitt event description framed her goal as making songs people can connect to their own personal stories, and that was the lane she occupied on stage: country music as autobiography, but with enough punch to keep the lawn engaged.
Her vocal presence carried the set. Kellogg’s voice has richness without losing clarity, and she understands how to sell a lyric without sanding all the feeling off it. The best parts of her performance came when the songs felt like testimony dressed in country-pop muscle. She brought a party to the stage, yes, but not the empty-calorie kind. Her version of a party still had a reason behind it.
That is where her background helps. Anyone who has lived through reality competition exposure, national attention, and the long grind of the music business has to learn how to make a crowd believe them quickly. Kellogg did that by treating the Levitt stage like a place worth taking seriously. She did not come across as an artist doing a casual summer stop. She came across as someone carrying a road-tested show into a city ready to receive it.
Country Music With the Door Open
The strongest thread between Lorene and Kellogg was not simply genre. It was accessibility. Both artists write and perform in a way that gives the crowd a door into the songs. Lorene’s version came through local-rooted storytelling and a bluesy acoustic foundation. Kellogg’s came through bigger, radio-ready country phrasing and songs built around perseverance.
That pairing gave the night a clean arc. The opener brought Sioux Falls into the show, then the headliner widened the lens. Lorene’s set felt like back roads, dance floors, and the kind of stories that start with “you know what happened?” Kellogg’s set felt like the next chapter of the same book, the one where those stories get carried onto a national stage and returned to a summer lawn with more miles on them.
Country music can sometimes get trapped between polish and sincerity, but this show worked because both artists kept the human part visible. Lorene’s bluesy vocal color gave her songs texture. Kellogg’s stage presence gave hers lift. Neither performance needed to pretend to be something it wasn’t.
Afterglow
By the end of the night, Levitt at the Falls had done what it keeps doing so well: it gave Sioux Falls a place to gather around live music without making the night feel overproduced or out of reach. Alexis Lorene opened with the voice of a local storyteller still carving her path in real time. Britnee Kellogg followed with the confidence of an artist whose road has stretched through television, touring stages, and personal reinvention.
The lawn emptied the way summer concert lawns do, slowly and without much ceremony. People packed up chairs, finished the last bites from food trucks, and drifted back toward downtown with songs still hanging in the air. The night did not need a grand final gesture. It had already made its point in smaller ways: a hometown opener, a national country voice, a free stage, and a Sioux Falls crowd willing to listen.
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