Post story explores festival funding

Yes, it sure does takes a lot of this stuff to put on a music festival.

Over the weekend, the Post-Dispatch published a story about the financial problems affecting the Big Muddy blues festival, which will be held over Labor Day weekend on Laclede's Landing. Written by pop critic Kevin Johnson, the piece has some unusually candid quotes about the effects of dwindling corporate sponsorship on the festival:

"We can't afford to do Big Muddy anymore," said Dawne Massey, executive director of the Laclede's Landing Merchants Association and organizer of the fest.

Big Muddy has always been free, and as Massey ironically notes, "Free events are very expensive." Sponsors for the event have become harder to find, dropping from 12 last year to five in 2005.

Unless a last-minute miracle occurs - a "big box of money falling out of the sky," in Massey's words - the plug will be pulled on Big Muddy after this year

For comparison purposes: The reported budget for this year's two-day Big Muddy festival is $85,000, or less than one-fifth of the $500,000 budget for the 2005 US Bank Saint Louis Jazz Festival. However, as Johnson reported in an earlier story, the Jazz Festival does have something the Big Muddy doesn't: a commitment for at least two more years from its lead sponsor.

The piece goes on to look at the costs and attendance at other local outdoor festivals and music events, and I was a little surprised to learn that Big Muddy crowds have exceeded 50,000 in recent years, while the Jazz Festival has struggled to get back to the 20,000 who turned out three years ago for a lineup of acts headlined by George Benson. It's generally a well-reported piece, but there's one big omission: the fact that the Blues Heritage Festival, the predecessor of the Big Muddy, was killed by financial troubles, too.

Johnson wasn't even working in St. Louis at the time, so perhaps he shouldn't be held accountable for the omission. But it's definitely relevant, because the Blues Heritage festival was brought down in 1997, at least in part, by the same thing that is mentioned in the article as one of the Big Muddy's problems: the high cost of headline talent. (There were other reasons, too, including what one source described to me as "insufficient financial controls" and the move to Buder Park in St. Louis County, but that's a different post than the one I'm writing right now.)

However, John May, who's president of the St. Louis Blues Society and a member of Big Muddy board, thinks the Big Muddy can be saved by using more St. Louis talent:

"Being a free event, I don't see that having huge names to attract people is essential to it being a good music festival," May said. "I thought from year to year the point was to see new things you haven't seen before and see them as they grow. But some organizations feel you need big names with big-budget dollars. Ten thousand dollars can go a long way with St. Louis artists. It disappears right away in 90 minutes with a name artist."

May would like to see Big Muddy refocused with area artists who don't require large paychecks.

So what's the relevance to jazz? Just that it would indeed be possible to put on a well-attended, artistically successful music festival for a lot less money that is being spent now, simply by using more St. Louis musicians.

Now, I wouldn't want to see the US Bank Saint Louis Jazz Festival completely abandon the idea of bringing in touring acts. Festival performances by the Dave Holland Big Band, Lincoln Center Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra and the Dave Douglas Quintet have all made my personal list of musical highlights in recent years.

But I would like to see the mix adjusted a bit. (For more thoughts on possible future programming directions, see this earlier post.) Given that this year's event featured just three local acts, and devoted something along the lines of less than 1% of their operating budget to those acts, they could make their dollars stretch a lot farther by exchanging one or two of their downbill acts for a bigger helping of homegrown talent. St. Louis has some outstanding jazz musicians, and since the high-dollar headliners don't appear to be packing them into Shaw Park, perhaps it's time to give the locals more of a shot.

(edited 8/6/05 to correct the name of Dave Douglas' band)