In this day and age, a concert failing to draw a big crowd is hardly anything out of the ordinary. What's interesting about last weekend's PegHead-Palooza, though, is just how poorly it fared -- and how confident its organizer still appears to be about carrying on with future events.

Held on Saturday in the Star Tribune's downtown parking lot (the Star Tribune was only involved as a sponsor and landlord), the day-long concert featured '80s metal hitmaker Dokken as headliner and six other mostly unknown bands. The $18 event only drew about 300 of the 4,000 people expected, said JD Gassman, whose multi-faceted music company PegHead Records organized the event. Dokken wound up playing only a 40-minute set, and the show ended about a half-hour early.

"We kind of lost our butt," admitted Gassman, who said he has been successful in the past promoting similar events while based in Las Vegas and Phoenix. He moved to Eden Prairie about three years ago because he believed the Twin Cities to still be a viable market in this down economy. He apparently still believes that.

Gassman said he plans to put on another PegHead-Palooza next year, as well as both a country music and hip-hop festival and more events, all with charity ties like the north Minneapolis tornado relief envisioned for Saturday's concert. He said his team will "try our best" to make at least a small donation to the Red Cross once the final losses are tallied. A documentary was filmed around the concert, he added, and that might also be used to help the Red Cross' efforts.

"We're a bigger company than we probably appear to be on the surface, and we'll dig deep to get past this one," Gassman said.