Entries by Michael Connelly

Well, first the good news … This year we had a stellar lineup of instructors who offered over 50 hours of instruction and participated in two evening concerts. Newcomers this year were Christie Burns and Butch Ross, Emily Wyatt, Carl Cook, and Small Potatoes - Jacquie Manning and Rich Prezioso. Those of you who missed the concerts and the workshops missed a great time. We also gave away over $3,000 worth of donated instruments to lucky winners in our raffle. Buying a raffle ticket gave you a chance at winning, and the certainty of hope.

Even better, we managed to just break even financially thanks to our generous sponsors and a grant from the Missouri Arts Council. For a festival only in its fourth year, that is outstanding! After three years of losing money and having to make up the difference out of our own pockets, this was a big relief. We really did not want to raise the price of attending the festival, but our financial situation made it a necessary evil. We would have loved to have kept the price lower, but our figures for the last three years showed a decline in attendance. We simply could not afford to keep going the way we had been. As our dear friend Mike Huddleson pointed out at the Saturday concert, if twice as many people had come, the price would be half of what it was – and we would feel more encouraged to keep going.


Which leads me to the bad news….

At our annual board meeting in July, Allen Macfarlane resigned his position as Secretary of the Jubilee of Acoustic Music. This leaves only three board members active in the planning and execution of the festival, as Doug Hamer is unable to devote much time to the planning of the festival. With the limited or non-existent time that our other committee members can devote to the festival, it is evident that almost all of the work of planning the festival, hiring instructors, finding sponsors and grants, doing promotion and setting up for the festival itself would fall to Kay and Michael.

In May of 2009, it will be Kay and Michael’s 25th wedding anniversary. The past two years we have either deferred or not had an anniversary celebration of any kind in order to put on the festival. In addition, it will be our son Devin’s senior year of high school, which means ACT exams, college visits, searching for scholarship money, etc. Simply put, there is not enough time to devote to our personal lives and the festival – especially with no other help. It is with great reluctance that we have decided not to do the festival in 2009.

Over the past four years the members of the committee have devoted thousands of volunteer hours to making the festival one of which we could be proud. We have done it not only for no pay, but at a significant financial and emotional cost to ourselves. We heard many times how impressed everyone was with how well the festival was organized. That doesn’t happen without a tremendous amount of work behind the scenes all year long. A festival of this magnitude and quality requires a serious commitment from those who plan and organize it. For the two months prior to the festival we work pretty much full time on nothing but the festival. We had hoped that after doing the festival for four years we would have a cadre of people willing to help us put the festival on. Instead, the dedicated group of individuals who worked tirelessly on the festival has dwindled to a very few.

We understand that quite a number of you, especially our great friends who supported us in any number of ways over the years will be disappointed. You have been extremely supportive of our goals with your time, talent and money; and we acknowledge that we could not have done the festival for the last four years without your help. We hope that you feel your efforts were repaid fully over the past four years. Unfortunately the attendance has consistently been below 100 people for the last three years, and we have found it harder and harder to get motivated to do what must be done to put on a festival of this quality for so few people.

We do plan to keep active in preserving the music we all love throughout the year. When and if the opportunity presents itself, we hope to offer one-day workshops with artists that are coming through the area. We will also continue to make you aware on this blog and through e-mails when artists that have appeared at the JAM in the past will be performing in our area.