[Dixielandjazz] Barbone Street - Reading Band Shell Concert

[Stephen Barbone]

List mates:

Last night Barbone Street performed a 2 hour concert at the Reading Band
Shell in the city park, Reading PA, USA. The raised band shell is
separated from the public seating area by a narrow pond, beautifully lit
and while not acoustically perfect, a wonderful audio crew made us sound
good.

I got there an hour and a half in advance to go over all the technical
details and was amazed to find a crowd of about 300 people already
there, placing lawn chairs and blankets on the grassy knoll.  Fast food
vendors were set up along the edges and the Berks Arts Council (the
presenter) had their tent set up to sell Tee shirts etc.

By gig start time, the crowd had swelled to somewhere between 2500 and
3500. Pre gig publicity had included an 18 minute telephone interview
with me over the local radio news station, as well as a full page
article in the Friday "Weekender" section of the Reading Eagle, the
major newspaper, complete with pictures. And to top that off, I think we
are going to get a concert review in the Arts Section this Sunday.

This general audience crowd was all ages, all genders, all races, a good
cross section of the USA. We did our usual bead throwing, using some
young female volunteers and went through 4 gross of mardi gras beads. We
played songs like Fidgety Feet, Sweet Georgia Brown, Wonderful World,
Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me, Jazz Me Blues, etc. and had a
great time.

Audience reaction?  Cheers at our introduction. Cheers after EVERY solo.
Cheers after EVERY song. While perhaps not the type of knowledgeable
jazz fans that attend festivals, or "follow" bands, their number and
their enthusiasm made up for that deficiency. Especially at concert's
end when we got a standing ovation from all those wonderful people.
Maybe not jazz fans, but surely music fans and that's what counts.

We first got involved with performances in Reading two years ago at the
10 day Berks Jazz Fest. After that start, we have become annual
performers at the Jazz Fest and now at the Band Shell, and are
developing quite a local reputation there. Who knows, we may even make a
CD because we are now frequently asked for one, and we are playing at a
lot of large audience venues these days. Maybe enough to justify the "up
front" cost?

No doubt about it, for us, the future of OKOM is where the people are.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
clarinet / leader
Barbone Street Jazz Band
http://home.earthlink.net/~barbonestreet/