| WOW!!!!! What an amazing show! What an amazing festival! Thank you to everyone who came out and supported the 6th Annual Flagstaff Blues and Brews Festival!!!! For those of you who stayed to the end – you were rewarded with Ana and Robert playing together and one hell of a show! I am still amazed at how Robert Randolph can play the steel pedal guitar while jumping up and down on the chair and singing! OMG – what a great show!!!!! I think every one of our acts did a great job and left it all on the stage.
There are so many people to thank for the success of the festival! Our team! Our team consists of interns, friends and family. Our NAU interns are amazing and we love working with them! They keep us young! This is how amazing our interns are – we had 4 of our interns that just graduated come back. One of them brought her parents who ALSO helped out tremendously! To the King family – we are grateful for all your help. We also had an intern who is a big dog at Peter Piper in Oklahoma (soon to return to AZ and be the western manager) fly out to help. They all knew I wouldn’t be able to work the event and they all jumped in and were there for Jen. Every time I hear someone make a disparaging remark about today’s youth, I put them in their place. We have worked with so many interns over the years, and only about 2 weren’t cut out for events. With so many graduating, we now have a new group and I’ve already fallen in love. This festival is literally owned and produced by women! All of our interns are women, and all of our friends who help us out are women! I am so proud of them all!
Our friends. Dang, between helping with hotel deals, running our greenroom and finance tent, where would we be without our friends! Our friends even volunteer to help us! We are so blessed with all the wonderful people who surround us in our mountain town!
Our sponsors – WOW – what amazing businesses!!! Flagstaff Subaru – you guys brought your A game and we were so proud to have you present the festival! So much fun working with you and your team! Twin Arrows – Arizona’s only 5 diamond casino resort who has been so good to us! Not only do they offer killer rates, they also sponsor our VIP area! Twin Arrows is the reason we have such great food and service. Their people have always been so fun to work with and they are the same way at the casino. GREAT folks! Timber Sky! Our stage sponsor. A new dark sky community in Flagstaff and even though they won’t be selling lots until later in the year, they were on board and supported us! It is so nice to have a developer who cares about what makes Flagstaff so special – our dark skies!!! Hensley Distributors – what can I say – beer, wine, margaritas makes attendees happy and that makes me happy. Hensley has gone above and beyond with their support and their team makes us look good! Satchmos – feeds our bands. I know – lucky bands. Jamie and his crew have been with us since year 1 and going backstage is always fun with the Satchmo’s crew! Great Circle Radio for getting the word out, Keeping the Blues Alive for the photo booth sponsorship, Bookmans for entertaining the kiddos, Clean Freak for sponsoring our hydration station, Canyon Coolers – THANK YOU for the letting us use so many coolers! Sunstate Equipment for all our electrical needs – along with GE Electric! Arizona Shuttle for shuttling volunteers, Southside Tavern for a great pre party, Flagstaff Extreme and Competition Carstar and of course Massage Envy for allowing our VIP to relax! Many more have made this possible, and thank you!
A thank you to our vendors, volunteers and YOU! This was the hardest Blues and Brews I could have had. Not being able to be part of the team and running around was hard. However, I did notice a lot of things about the VIP I plan to change, so there’s that. But the part that really blew me away, were all of you who came up and told me you were praying for me, telling us how much you enjoy the festival and basically just giving us your trust and love! Believe me, I was close to tears many times with your well wishes and comments. We are all in this together and both Jen and I feel there is no way we would be where we are without all of you who have come every year. The feedback that we receive from our attendees is priceless. We know we don’t know everything, and each year is another learning experience, and with all your feedback and help, this festival improves every year. We can hardly wait to see the changes we make for next year! Okay, Jen can wait, but I’m on it! Jen’s just a little tired and rightfully so. I went home on Saturday and couldn’t sleep so I now have a list of all the acts I want to see. I’m going to fight the cancer just so I can see them all, because it’s going to take a few years to book them all!
A very large amount of gratitude to the two men in our lives. Jen’s love Jason Brown, was outstanding. Poor guy had no idea he was going to have to be Jen’s right hand, but he jumped in and the two of them were quite the team. And Patrick, Sunday was our 29th wedding anniversary. We were both so tired, we decided that we’ll hit a nice restaurant in September (after chemo when I can really appreciate a meal!). He’s always there when we need him and he doesn’t complain. Which is good, because damn, I can’t be easy to live with! I come up with ideas and he makes it happen. He might roll his eyes, but he makes it happen.
Finally, if you made it this far – here is the reward. We need you to take our survey. We are entering each one into a drawing for 2 VIP tickets to next year’s festival! I know, we’re bribing you, but it works for us both! Take our survey and as always, we want your feedback. We want to know what YOU WOULD LIKE!!! We want to know the good, the bad and the ugly, because we want you to come back next year! The Survey will be sent out later today by eventbrite/survey monkey so keep an eye out!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!! This was the year we took off and we are so grateful for your support!
Deb and Jen |
