I've recently become involved booking and producing concerts for a community non-profit arts organization. We have a very nice hall (seats a max of 150) and it is our aim to get mainly local performers. Now all of my musician friends want more venues like this where they can perform, and we want to promote live music in the community. But so far the audience turnout has been meager. There's also another community live music series for local musicians in this area that has similar audience problems.

I guess the question is how do we get more people to turn out for live music. I've promoted concerts in the past so I know many things about publicity, press releases, posters and flyers, etc. Concentrating on the local folk musician community does not seem to be the answer since most of them are involved in their own gigs, jams, etc. and there are fewer of them compared to the non-musician community. I think people are conditioned by the commercial music industry to be passive consumers. They will come to hear the 'big names' from out of town for big $$$, but don't realize that there are some great talented local performers that they can hear for much less money.

Sometimes we get people coming to our concerts who were completely unaware of live local music and the talent that exists. This is the potential audience we would like to attract. There's probably no real answer - it's just a feature of our over-programed lives that people can never find time for these kinds of things. Is this a problem in other parts of the country?

Cheers, S. in Seattle