Hey guys,
Yes Phil, the FLORABAMA is the center of the festival, but it is far from the only venue. It is the ground zero because Joe Gilchrist, the owner was the founder and guiding force behind this, often paying for it all out of his own pocket. But it has grown far beyond the Bama and Joe. Now pretty much every place down there gets into the spirit and wants to climb on board. (It brings several hundred thousand dollars to the area tourism in an otherwise REALLY DEAD time.)
Kevin, you probably won't find a lot of specifics up until about a month before the festival. A lot of reasons for this. First of all, getting confirmations from hit writers is a pain in itself. These people don't know what they are doing from one day to the next. They do well to get from one appointment to another, much less something two months away. Some will be nominated for CMA awards so they can't go. Some are involved in other awards or end of year business. Some are in the studio. Their publishers need them for last minute press or writer's retreats. If it is a choice of spending three hundred dollars in gas and food, driving 8 hours, taking three or four days out of a schedule making $100 for a show, and writing with an artist who might be song of the year next year, writing with the artist is probably going to win out.
Venues, drop out at last minutes. During the season where money is coming in hand over fist, it is easy to say "Sure I want to be involved." Then as it dries up in Sept. and you are trying to keep a skeleton crew on, ponying up a $500 venue fee and advertising, gets harder to deal with. And unfortunately, places close.
A lot of new people are always trying to get in. This is cool, but many are frankly not very good, are all ballad writers and think they are going into a Bluebird, instread of a beach bar. So they come totally unprepared. They run customers out, losing the audience is death for resturants and bars who depend on that business. The new people have no name recognition, and a lot of them think the world revolves around THEM. You would not believe some of the complaints I have heard from newbies who make demands and have NO REASON to have demands.
Hotels/condos. Over the years, there have been problems. Believe it or not, some of my writer compadres, (even a couple of co-writers) have acted like they were Keith Moon on summer vacation. Trashing private condos or hotel rooms has been common. Some times the all night revelry will disturb regular guests. And of course, one example of someone who believed his tortured poet press kit garbage, emptied the contents of his colostomy bag on the walls of one place, and was thrown out of the hotel (and the festival) for urinating on the heads of some girls in a room underneath. And I was shocked to my soul about three years later he was invited BACK to the Festival. Part of the reason I have no respect or sympathy for a lot of these classless people. Not empathetic of the tortured soul nonsene. If you are that tortured, go do us all a favor and shoot yourself somewhere else and let people write platitudes to you. I have no time for that nonsense.
So a lot of hotels have been less than enthusiastic about inviting the Festival back in. Therefore, they have to see how many rooms they can get (all donated for free) before they know how many people they can invite. And when you need the hit writers to attract the public, it limits the time for new people. That is the reason for the open mics. They try to include more people, but have to be careful about what types of people these are, and how easy they are to work with. Far too many have an "air of entitlement" because they are invited down to be with some hit writer who also doesn't respect the people or the festival.
One of my real pet peeves of this are people that complain about everything and don't have a care for any one but themselves. I have been knocked out of performing slots at the last minute with too many of my fans staying up late to see me by these people. Or watched an entire audience leave due to someone onstage being drunk, abusive and insulting before I even got a change to go onstage. Then to see them invited back year after year, pretty much ignites my bullshit detector. Respect is earned and some people don't earn any. And they ruin or make things harder on those that do.
So all these things and more are reasons the schedule is always late. It is a real balancing act between the public, the volunteers, the performers, the venues, the advertisers. And it all costs money. Over the past three years, BP paid for a lot of it, due the oil spill that drove tourism away for a while. But I am pretty sure that is over.
So having people that come down, pay for rooms, contribute to the economy, is very important. Why I try to bring some people to the Regatta is because they have been so good to me over the years. I hope some of you can help out there. I always make sure I pay for food and drinks, in the places I perform, even though I am often comped things when I play. I try to make another show in the venues I play in when I am not playing. I try to buy drinks and bring other people in. Things like golf, or some of the local attractions, I try to suggest.
That is what makes it all work. I'll come back in a second to give a run down on the venues.
MAB