Skillet ready to wrap another Wild Adventures concert season

Published 1:00 am Tuesday, July 29, 2025

VALDOSTA – A Skillet date has become a given each year when Wild Adventures Theme Park releases its concert schedule.

Skillet has been the last show for the Wild Adventures concert season for more than a decade. 

This year is no exception.

John Cooper, the faith-based rock band’s lead singer and bass player, wouldn’t have it any other way.

“No other place schedules us every single year,” Cooper said in a recent phone interview with The Valdosta Daily Times. “Every year, we look at our bookings and Valdosta is on the list.

“I love Valdosta. The people are so great. The first time we played there it was shocking looking at the amount of people who came out and the amount of people who sang along to our songs.”

Since the 2024 stop in Valdosta, Cooper and Skillet have been busy.

At the time of this phone interview in March, Skillet was on the road. Cooper called from Iowa, on an afternoon before a show. The hard-charging singer was actually looking forward to a few weeks of rest at home. The band spent the late spring and early summer touring Europe, where the band has a massive fan base, then back to dates throughout the United States.

Last November, the band released “Revolution,” its 12th album.

“It’s our first independent record. We’d been with Atlantic Records for 20 years,” Cooper said, adding going independent was liberating and challenging.

“We can record an album on our own schedule,” he said. “You may have a song that’s relevant, but on a label’s schedule it’s not released for a year or so later and it’s no longer relevant.”

That’s liberating.

The challenge: Releasing an album without a major label’s backing, however, was sort of like walking a tight rope without a net. That can be nerve-wracking.

Cooper said the move has paid off. The independent album hit No. 1 for U.S. Christian albums on the Billboard charts and No. 12 on the UK charts for rock and metal albums.

“Revolution” is the latest success for the band, which will mark its 30th anniversary in 2026. The band has received two Grammy nominations, won Dove Awards for rock album of the year, rock song of the year; won Billboard Music Award for rock album; saw an album certified platinum and one album, “Awake,” certified double platinum; and had two albums certified gold and four songs certified multi-platinum.

Pretty good for a band that Cooper admits he wasn’t certain would last long back in 1996. Even the band name was sort of thrown together.

“It was the 1990s and there were a lot of really weird band names,” Cooper said. Bands in the 1970s and ‘80s sought somewhat lofty and pretentious names. By the ’90s, “there was a rebellion against that. Bands were like, ‘I don’t care about my band name.’”

Cooper and his band mates came from several other bands, playing various styles; however, when those sounds came together, it worked. Like making a tasty meal by adding a bunch of different flavors to a skillet.

That’s how the band came up with its name.

“We came up with the name in about a minute. So we went with Skillet because we thought this probably won’t last long. Our name just doesn’t really matter,” Cooper said. “If I knew it was going to last 20-30 years, we would have put more thought into it.”

Another name associated with the band is Pan Heads. Jimmy Buffet fans are Parrot Heads. Skillet fans are Pan Heads.

“We said Pan Heads as a joke but it caught on with fans,” Cooper said.

Early in Skillet’s career, back in the days when audiences were small, the band noticed some people were following the band from show to show. Some of these die-hard fans brought skillets to the shows. In the summer of 1997, one fan wore a cast-iron skillet on his head. 

“He wore it like a ball cap,” Cooper said, “and had it taped around his head.”

A security guard called the fan a pan head. The band overheard the comment and Pan Heads were born.

Wild Adventures continues the tradition for the 14th time of hosting Skillet and Pan Heads with its closing show of the park’s concert season.

Skillet plays at 8 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 2, at Wild Adventures Theme Park, Old Clyattville Road. For more information, visit wildadventures.com.