L. KENT WOLGAMOTT and JEFF KORBELIK / GZO | Posted: Saturday, July 15, 2006 7:00 pm
About 11:30 p.m. Saturday, Los Straitjackets will hit its final notes, the twangy guitar-based surf sound will reverberate off the nearby buildings and a Lincoln tradition will come to an end. After 15 years, July Jamm is calling it quits.
“Every event runs its course,” said Deb Johnson, executive director of Updowntowners, the group that has produced the festival. “Nationally, this kind of event has run its course. It’s challenging to produce in Lincoln with an aging demographic and being in an intersection as opposed to a nice festival site.”
The kind of event Johnson is referring to is a jazz/blues festival. Over the last decade, those festivals have gone into decline as the blues audience ages. That has been particularly true for the downtown Lincoln festival.
“The demographic for July Jamm has always been a bit older,” Johnson said. “Our biggest demographic group has been 36 to 45 and the next group has been just above that.”
Put together after the demise of the Flatwater Festival, a June arts and music event held near the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus that was merged into Haymarket Heydays in 1990, July Jamm drew a reported 60,000 in its first incarnation in 1992. Headlining acts were Buckwheat Zydeco and the Butanes Soul Revue.
In 2001, July Jamm’s 10th anniversary drew a record 12,000 people for a Saturday evening show that featured Chubby Carrier, a zydeco artist, bluesman Coco Montoya and “nuclear polka” band Brave Combo — all Zoo Bar regulars.
In the last few years, July Jamm has expanded its musical lineup to include a wider variety of sounds, especially roots rock and Irish music. But that musical mix didn’t always work in the festival’s favor, according to Ground Zero bloggers and e-mailers.
“July Jamm featured a pretty eclectic lineup of musical acts but a lot of those have pretty limited appeal,” wrote Sam Bethune. “I think many would-be attendees shy away because they don't want to sit and wait through several other ‘niche’ bands to hear their particular type of music being played.”
July Jamm’s slide in attendance and, subsequently, revenue puzzled long-time festival vendor Mike Kazas, whose Papa John’s/Parthenon concessions had a booth at the festival for all but two years.
“Why don’t people want to come out?” Kazas asked. “There’s the huge stage, great food vendors, beer and liquor and the cost to get in is fairly cheap. It’s a hard one for us to figure out as well. You could say it’s the entertainment, but it’s not like that. They have good entertainment. They just haven’t had too many people the last couple of years.”
The July Jamm site — the intersection of 12th and N streets — also was an issue, especially during the hottest time of the year.
During the day, the sun often beats down on the streets and buildings, making the 12th and N street site inhospitable at best and cutting afternoon crowds to a minimum.
The festival grounds often don’t cool off much at night. In 1997, for example, Dave Alvin, who is one of this year’s festival headliners, nearly passed out after playing his set in the 100-degree heat.
“It’s so hot that it’s miserable to work,” Kazas said. “(The heat) really takes the enjoyment out of it.”
In contrast, Jazz in June, the first festival-type event in downtown Lincoln each summer, benefits from milder temperatures.
Plus, the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden’s courtyard, where Jazz in June is held, has shade trees and soft grass — a stark contrast to the concrete of the July Jamm site.
The more accommodating site and cooler weather have helped the weekly jazz concert series steadily grow from 200 to 500 people per show 15 years ago to 6,500-7,000 for each performance this year. Former Jazz in June chairman and music director Ted Eschliman estimated the festival could accommodate another 500 to 1,000 people per performance.
“At some point we’re going to reach the law of diminishing returns,” he said. “People aren’t going to go because it’s not as much fun. Fortunately, we haven’t reached that point yet.”
Jazz in June also has another distinct advantage over July Jamm when it comes to drawing a crowd — it’s free.
“It helps we don’t charge anything, and it’s good entertainment,” Eschliman said.
Because it is free, Jazz in June draws a different kind of audience than those who would pay to see a show or attend a multi-band street festival.
“People crave community, something like Jazz in June,” Eschliman said. “It’s not about the music. It’s a big social thing.”
Jazz in June also doesn’t serve alcohol, which makes the event family-friendly, he said.
“(Alcohol) is an element we’ve never had to deal with,” he said. “All it takes is for a few immature folks to ruin it for everybody else.”
The difficulty of taking families to July Jamm for the evening musical lineups also was cited by bloggers and e-mailers as one of the reasons they weren’t able to go to the festival.
Some have cited competition from other downtown summer festivals as a reason for July Jamm’s decline. But Johnson and Tom Lorenz, who manages Pershing Center, the host of Ribfest, the largest of all Lincoln festivals, disagree with that contention.
“I think there’s room for all these festivals,” Lorenz said. “I like July Jamm. I’m sorry to see it go.”
Like Jazz in June, the Nebraska Pork Producers Capital City Ribfest has continued to grow through the last decade.
Last year, the ninth Ribfest drew a record 35,000 people through its turnstiles during its Thursday afternoon to Sunday evening run.
That growth has happened for a reason, Lorenz said.
“We really focused Ribfest on the food,” Lorenz said. “The music and everything else was ancillary to it. But when you combine those things, it was very attractive to people. July Jamm was always seen as a blues event, a music event.”
In addition to keeping the food at the center of the festivities, Lorenz said Ribfest organizers have tried to make changes in the event every year. Those changes have included adding rib vendors, altering the festival layout, extending its hours and, this year, selling beer in cans rather than in plastic cups.
“People like to come back, but they don’t want to do the same thing and see the same thing every year,” Lorenz said. “I’m not saying July Jamm didn’t do that, but we keep trying to tweak it (Ribfest). Some of the changes, like selling beer in cans, may not be that big, but everything makes a difference.”
Pershing has learned the lesson of constant change by experience but also by watching what has happened at other Ribfests.
In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Lorenz said, Ribfest organizers thought they had established a solid audience that would come every year. So they cut back on advertising and other expenses, only to see attendance drop and continue to go down.
“Once that drops off, you never get it back,” Lorenz said. “It’s hard for anything that has started dropping to turn things around.”
That, in part, is why this year’s Ribfest will offer a more extensive entertainment lineup than in past years, particularly on Thursday night when Shooter Jennings, the son of Waylon Jennings and a rising star on the alternative country/Southern rock scene, will headline the evening’s musical offerings.
“It’s the 10th anniversary. We wanted to do something different and special,” Lorenz said. “That’s part of changing, too. We don’t need to do ultra-national acts and pay 50 grand for them, but Shooter’s somebody new and good. It’s fun to do that stuff.”
The Updowntowners decided to drop July Jamm in order to emphasize Celebrate Lincoln, an ethnic festival that completed its third year in early June.
That festival is designed to celebrate the ethnic mix of Lincoln, one of the top 20 cities in the country with the fastest growing population of new Americans, Johnson said. The Angelou Report on Lincoln economic development cited a need for such a festival, she said.
While Celebrate Lincoln has a strong family component and many more daytime events, there is a musical element to the festival. But it is far less constraining than the blues/roots focus of July Jamm.
“With Celebrate Lincoln, you can do any kind of music,” Johnson said. “It has a much wider demographic. There is so much more we can do.”
For example, this year, The Elders, an Irish music group that had been very popular at July Jamm, played Celebrate Lincoln as did previous July Jamm band Electric Soul Method.
And Celebrate Lincoln is already a success, she said.
“This year, it surpassed last year’s attendance for July Jamm,” Johnson said. More than 14,000 people attended the festival on its first day alone.
Updowntowners will look into the possibility of starting other festivals as will Pershing Center.
“We could do a lot more in the festival area in this community,” Johnson said.
Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or at kwolgamott@journalstar.com. Reach Jeff Korbelik at 473-7213 or at jkorbelik@journalstar.com.