The Danville Harvest Jubilee has released their concert series for this summer. Wow. Didn’t see that one coming.
Country performers highlight concert series
The grumbling has already started. Danville, you’re stuck with country music concerts. Let’s bring on a Big Board of observations and random thoughts to talk about it…
- The Carrington Pavilion holds about 4700 people at full capacity. A-List acts have little interest in playing at arenas that small and even if they did, their performance fees would make tickets cost more than your car payment.
- Want an example of that? Roanoke’s “new” Elmwood Park is having a Sheryl Crow concert and tickets are a quite reasonable $15. How did they get a low A-List act to play a 5000 seat amphitheater with only $15 tickets? Easy. The City of Roanoke kicked in $50,000 of taxpayers money to make it happen. That’s not going to happen with the Harvest Jubilee committee or the City of Danville. (Side note: Although I rarely cover things happening in Roanoke, Valerie Garner is running for City Council there and would be the perfect choice for Roanoke’s City Council. She knows her stuff and is deserving of your vote.)
- According to a survey that “you people” took a few years ago, you want country music and your second choice is country music. The detailed results of that survey were never made public, by the way.
- People grumble about the constant diet of country music concerts. You’ve got to face that they work because they haven’t had a bust yet and they probably won’t.
- Whatever happened to the Harvest Jubilee? It was big in the 1980’s and it just stopped. I want to think it had something to do with tobacco sponsorship money drying up.
- I can’t find anything that tells me who’s on the “Harvest Jubilee Board”.
Well, that Big Board got random near the end, didn’t it? Anyway, face it. You’re getting low B-List country music acts because they’re cheap, they’re willing to play small arenas and Harvest Jubilee turns a profit. That’s the bottom line.
Yea hi. A trifecta! Although I try to support local events, you wont see me there….not even a carrot for the rockers,R&B, or blues crowd.
You nailed it. You simply cannot go broke in Danville selling Fords, 3 hotdogs for a dollar, or tickets to country music concerts. The only surprise is that they haven’t booked a rap show, as complaints seem to get louder every year.
I saw KISS in Portsmouth last year in an ampitheatre with a little over 5,000 seats. Obviously it was sold out. Our seats were pretty close to the front (and with a place that size, there are no bad seats). My ticket cost around $60. To the best of my knowledge, the City of Portsmouth kicked in no extra money.
If you book the right acts here and promote them outside Danville too, they will draw. I’m convinced the “board” doesn’t want any modern rock acts or pop. Our pavilion is big enough for a lot of these bands or performers.
They’ve tried to “throw us a bone” with the Jam on the Dan tribute show, which last year was barely promoted and done on a weekend with about 5 other big events happening. They’ll book a couple tribute acts again for it this year, it will draw so-so. They’ll say “we told you so!” and next year, here we are again.
I’ve got nothing against country music. I enjoyed The Band Perry quite a bit last year and it was a huge draw. But a little variety thrown in would be nice. If they’re gonna do 3 big shows a year, and this year I use the term “big” loosely, then just give us ONE non-country show. Promote it like you do the rest of them and see what happens.
Just my two cents.
I agree with Lee. I’ve said it for years, give me one carrot and I will support all three…but not until then.
Promotion is the key, and Lee’s points above are right on target, including the attitude of the committee.
In addition to comments above, I and many others I know we’re on vacation the weekend of the Jam on the Dan. What was it, the week after the 4th of July?
Fred – yep, it was July 13th. In addition to what everyone has already said, it rained in biblical quantities all weekend. That’s no one’s fault, but was yet another factor in the poor attendance numbers.
Well here is the thing bring a Rap, R&B group, Lets see how long it takes for a shooting to happen. Lets face it, country is looked at as a safe bet. I feel that since danville has NO real rock station (96.3 ish clone) called 104.5 that plays the same old rock (don’t get me wrong its great to listen too but really how many times do you want to hear the same old songs) The Pop station got changed to a “country station” like we needed another one. And the crowd that would go to “modern” or “heavy” rock concerts well those 18-40 just get overlooked in the city.
Travis, When 103.87 was AMP 103.7 the station was heavily promoted and yet still everyone went to 107.5 WKZL or 1051. Please tell me where you and the others that like the music that was on AMP where. you certainly where not listing to the station and when it did switch to Country legends 103.7 it got a huge response, again same promotion went into both stations. Supply and demand works just as much in the radio and music industry as it does in the food and fuel markets. If the people demand it someone will supply it and if there is no demand then well whats the point in making it available. As for 104.5 the Dan i have listened to both WROV and WWDN and there is a huge difference in the music. Yes WROV plays older “classic rock” they do play some of the newer stuff that comes out. 104.5 is dedicated to the classic rock genre and lets be honest new music in any format is not immediately a classic as soon as it is released therefore it would be difficult on a station that is focused on “Classic Rock” to not play some of the same songs over in a day
For a concert with an attendance of 5000, a $50,000 subsidy lowered ticket prices a whopping $10 each. That’s not the difference here. I’m glad Danville isn’t subsidizing these concerts any more than providing the venue at an effective subsidy rate (I’m guessing).
There are a large number of non-country acts that would be happy to make the amount of money a concert at this venue would bring in. Look at Innsbrook After Hours for the diversity of acts available to play this type of venue. Look at The National in Richmond, which is far smaller and brings in plenty of high quality acts.
Let me suggest that the more I think about this, the more I am convinced they are getting lower-tier country acts precisely because country music IS so popular and that they could get higher quality acts in other musical genres as well as possibly putting on 4 or even 5 events a year if they changed their strategy. From what I have seen, there is potential for Danville to establish a brand for fun summer concerts as a regional draw. I know plenty of people who will go to Charlotte, Charlottesville, or farther to hear a beloved act and I don’t just mean the big names. Heck, I really enjoy a band called CAKE and will travel far to listen to them. They perform at venues of this size. The same people will come to Danville from other places if Danville is the place to book them. They can easily enough fly in to perform here or drive in here. It’s not like we’re in the middle of nowhere around three mountains.
Beyond that, the venue would be a good one for a solid comedy headliner. I’m not talking Louis CK or Larry the Cable Guy, but you know maybe a Jim Gaffigan type.
Booking this very underwhelming lineup of a guy who has canceled on Danville before apparently and two artists few have heard of exposes that there is a lot more that could be done here.
I agree that there is definitely a void. However, when you talk to people who’ve done this in Danville for years….there have been attempts to bring in non-country acts since the 90s. I remember when they brought in a couple of pop groups (Cravin Melon) and jazz acts in the mid-90s. Good entertainment, but there wasn’t a large crowd. Later on, you had Styx, Darius Rucker, and a couple of other attempts in the 00s, again, not an overwhelming crowd compared to country. Then you had last year’s attempt at Jam on the Dan as Mr. Shanks pointed out. Not a great crowd (but a really bad weekend). To my knowledge, none of these acts have EVER approached the crowd that even B-list country acts bring to Danville. I am not a fan of country (nothing against it, but it’s not me). However, it’s hard for me to argue with the organizers as the track record for other acts isn’t great.
Honestly, maybe that’s the trouble. Or let’s not say trouble. Maybe the folks who do the 3 country concerts a year should be free to do three country concerts a year, and somebody else should step up and figure out the right couple of non-country acts to book. It is very obvious that the people who come for the country concerts are the people who shop in Danville already for the most part. They have that figured out. Great. For concerts to actually establish Danville as a place to come, they’re going to need to be marketed.