January 2017 Blues and Brews Update

January 2017 Blues and Brews Update

I’m sitting here listening to Ana Popovic sing the blues and thinking about how many days I have until June.  Not fond of winter months, and the only thing that keeps me going is the occasional weekend in Phoenix and convincing myself that we’re now close to 4 months from June!  Yes, I’m that person – the one that married a snow lover, gave birth to a snow lover, living in a community that is beside themselves with joy over the 3 feet of snow.   I’m thinking I just need sand, water and umbrellas in my cocktails.  As I write this, I realize that if my husband sees it – I will have some sand, a bottle of water and one of my umbrellas waiting for me on the dining room table.

We are so busy here at Peak Events!   Monday, we will finally get to see the girls!  We had a welcome back dinner planned, but snow decided it wanted to crash the party – so was postponed a week.  We’ve got a few new staff members and I’m so excited to meet with everyone and start the energy building for all the events we have going this year!

I have so many things I want to do with the Festival, but unfortunately, I keep running out of daylight!   Okay – this time of year, it’s easy to run out of daylight.   I can deal with the evenings being so short, even though in the summer, evenings mean sitting outside on the deck listening to music until about 9pm.   Mornings – now that’s hard!   I hate waking up to the dark, taking a shower, eating breakfast, having a cup of coffee and then FINALLY the sun begins to peak up over the horizon.

Since it’s only 28 outside with a low of 8, I think I’ll cheer myself up by sharing with everyone my DREAM for the Flagstaff Blues and Brews Festival in the future.

  1. Days – I’d love to go to 2 days. I’m really committed to this one – I think it will bring the town together to embrace the festival and the blues.  Plus, it means I can book more talent!
  2. Talent – My dream is to one day be able to book whomever I want without worrying about how much they cost and to book for at least a week long concert. I was talking with the Intuit Customer Rep (I’m a yapper) and while he was trying to help me with Quickbooks, he mentioned that he’d just come back from a festival that had over 180 acts and 100,000 people!
  3. People- I’d love to see 10,000 people come to our festival and basically sell out the festival within a month. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to wonder if everyone likes the lineup and will buy tickets!   So – do me a favor and buy those tickets early!   March 1st begins the sleepless nights.
  4. VIP – I’m very proud of our VIP and I’d like to see it expand to 500 folks.
  5. Kid’s area – I’d really like to see more family’s come to the festival and I’m not sure how to get them out and about. Of course when I was the mother of a young child – I made a point of planning all cool events with grandma!
  6. Parking – well, I’d love Blues and Brews to grow so large we have to use busses to transport everyone to the festival. I’ll figure out where everyone is going to park when that happens.
  7. Arts and Crafts Vendors – I’d love to one day have 100 vendors! I think it would be fun to walk around and shop while listening to the blues.  This freaks Jen out – the whole do we have enough room thing, but this is MY dream and that’s what I’d like.
  8. Food Vendors – I’d like to see a really cool food alley with over 20 different vendors (this only works if we have 10K people) and I’d like to see an acoustic stage in the food alley.
  9. Stages – okay I’ll admit – I would love to have more than one stage. This takes us back to number 2 – I love the artists.
  10. When everything above happens, I’d like to retire and just enjoy the Flagstaff Blues and Brews as a participant. Of course when all this happens, I may be in my 80s – so work with me people!