1on1: Elliott Sadler (cont'd)

Q: You're having the 2008 Barn Party on Sept. 3 at the famous Sadler Barn in your hometown of Emporia, Va. It's for charity, which is cool, but the famous Sadler Barn? Briefly, what makes it famous?

Sadler: We started 25 years ago, having a Christmas party for our hunting buddies and people like that. It started as 60 or 70 people, and it has grown in 25 years as we have added on additions and bedrooms and kitchens and dance floors and stages ... it doesn't really look like a barn anymore on the inside. We have traditional Christmas parties and stuff for our customers where we have thousands of people there at a time. A lot of functions are held in our small town at the Sadler Barn.

• 2008 Barn Party for charity
• Official Foundation Web site

Q: Who manages it? It's a destination entertainment facility.

Sadler: We manage it through our oil company, one of my dad's businesses, and they make sure it's ready to go. They keep the schedule book on it, and it stays pretty full. Non-profit organizations use it for dances, we have a lot of wedding receptions there, a lot of fund-raisers, a lot of auctions, the local YMCA uses it all the time. It's rented out or used once or twice a month, easy.

Q: What are we talking, square-footage-wise?

Sadler: It started out at 800 or 1,000 square feet, and now it's 10 or 12 or 14,000 square feet. We definitely have added onto it. It's a cool deal. We understand how to have a crowd there, we understand how it works, we have the place for it. Then we came up with the barn party. We came up with the idea, 'let's give the fans something that no other driver will do. No other driver invites fans over to his house to do stuff, and we want to give our fans something special that they can remember their favorite drivers by.'

We had one a couple years ago and it was a huge success. That's all the fans have talked about since then, so we decided to have another one.

Q: How do you feel about fan events in general?

Sadler: Events are fun for me, because at the racetrack you don't have time to meet the fans like you should. When we're at the racetrack, we're focused on what we're doing as drivers. You don't always have the time to stop and sign autographs, you don't always have time to stop and talk to the fans at the racetrack, because you're meeting with the crew chiefs or driving the car and you're trying to stay focused on the job at hand.

I love doing events. I'm an extrovert, anyway, so I love doing events where you can spend the time with the fans and mingle and talk, sign autographs and things like that.

This one, yeah, I'm looking forward to it, because it's going to be fun, but it's a lot of pressure on us, too, because we want everything to go right, we want everything to be perfect when the fans get there. It's a lot of hard work put in by a lot of cool people so that when that Sept. 3 comes, we have every 't' crossed and every 'i' dotted, and hopefully everybody enjoys it.

Q: What are some of the special things that people can look forward to at the Barn Party?

Sadler: Not a lot of times do you have that many celebrities in the same area, so to have me and Dale Jarrett and Kasey Kahne there from the NASCAR world, signing autographs ... We have these cool prints and stuff out that the fans can come and be a part of and get signed. Then we have Lee Brice, who is just starting out in country music, we have local icon Don Cox opening the show for everybody. It's pretty much eight hours of country music being played that day.

We have American Idol's Bucky Covington and then of course Blake Shelton playing, for a very small amount ticket. You can't go to an auditorium somewhere and pay this kind of money and see this much music at one time. I think we're offering them something pretty special. Not only do you get to see your favorite NASCAR driver in a very relaxed setting, out in the backyard, pretty much at somebody's house ... then you get to see a pretty cool concert, seven or eight hours of music. How can you beat that? (Continued)