Archive: Around Town

You show up early and claim your piece of Myers Park for the evening.  You sit back and enjoy the band, maybe visiting with friends, maybe getting some food or something to drink, maybe even dancing.  That's the easy part of the summer Myers Park concert series.  Putting it all together is a different matter.  That takes a combination of persistence, experience, good timing, good connections, good luck, and good weather.  But Lansing Park Superintendent Steve Colt says the series' success has made booking the shows more a matter of culling than struggling to book bands.

"Back in the beginning when we ran it out of a pavilion and 40 or 50 people would come and watch, you had to call around and see if somebody would give you the time to come out and play," he says. "Now it's taken on a life of its own.  I've got a drawer full of CDs that performers send, and now, of course, they send you links to online performances.  Now we get a lot of requests to play there.  The hard part is to balance and try to rotate people through.  To try to keep favorites there , but not too long because you don't want to get boring."

Producing concerts is about hiring the bands, providing the venue, and selling the events.  The Myers Park concerts have become so popular that they don't really need selling any more.  While entry is free, a battered guitar case at the park entrance is for donations, and people do donate.  Colt says that while the series doesn't make a profit, it pays for itself most seasons.

"We don't charge people to go in," he says. "We just ask for donations.  We've always done well.  We're not killing it at the door, but we're also not losing money on it."

Colt is thinking about the summer series a year ahead, paying attention to which bands particularly resonate with the crowds, and putting together a mix of successful past performers and bands that haven't played the park before.  Colt often finds himself telling good bands no in order to keep the lineup interesting and diverse.

"Some folks have been persistent, trying to get back in," he says. "We love all the bands who play for us -- they've been outstanding.  It's just about trying to get old ones back in again, or give new ones a shot.  We try to mix up the genres when we can.  It would not be as much fun if it was seven weeks of the same cover songs."

This summer the mix includes a mix of classic rock, a little jazz, southern rock, and country. The Myers Park lineup features The Backtalk Band (July 5), Tailor Made (July 12), Bad Alibi (July 19), City Limits (July 26), The Destination Band (August 2), Small Town Shade (August 9), and Iron Horse (August 16).  A Friday concert in Ludlowville Park will feature Bob Keefe and the Surf Renegades (July 27th), concurrent with the Lansing Lion's Club's annual ice cream social.

As the series has grown sound systems have become an issue.  Bands are responsible for whatever lighting and sound they can provide.  Colt tries to make good sound quality a condition of playing.  He says bands want to perform there, and often go as far as to purchase, borrow, or rent additional sound equipment.

"The popularity of these shows have grown to the point where the amount of people at Myers sit all the way around the bandstand, not just in the pocket up front where it used to be," he says. "Now they're all over the park.  There are as many families that listen to the concert behind the bandstand as there are in front of it.  When I talk to these bands I have to ask them if they have enough equipment to put out 360 degrees of sound.  If the sound is only in one area and people are sitting where it's not they're not going to like the show.  Then it's not about musicianship or talent... it gets down to not having enough equipment to get the sound out."


As attendance has grown over the past few years Colt has invited vendors to be part of the series.  In past years there has been a hot dog cart and various other kinds of vendors.  School teams trying to raise money, or the County's informational tent to tell people about recycling are examples.  The Meg-A-Moo's ice cream truck is a mainstay of the series, and this year Salt Point Brewery will be offering some of their Lansing-brewed beers.  Michelle Zirbel of Jump Around Inflatables will return with her food truck as well this summer.

Colts stresses that weather is key for a successful concert.  When a concert is cancelled for weather he tries to re-book the band for the Thursday after the scheduled concerts, but last minute band availability makes that tricky, especially when band members have to travel from diverse locations.  Last year two were cancelled, which Colt says is a lot compared to other years.  City Limits couldn't reschedule because some of its members were booked to play with other bands.  The Dean's List has some local members, but others one to four hours from Lansing, making it hard to get the band together at short notice. 

"John Dean is probably one of the best local musicians in our area," Colt says.  "His band is a family band, a spinoff of the old Dean Brothers band.  The day they were scheduled it was just raining sideways.  Unfortunately part of the band comes from New York City, and another is in the Skaneateles/Syracuse area.  You have to make a call early on so you're not dragging people up for a rain-out.  That's one I really felt bad about.  We were never able to put a makeup date together."

And re-booking beyond the week or so after scheduled series dates isn't practical.

"When you get near the end of August people disconnect," Colt says. "It gets dark earlier and people are starting to get ready for school.  For our series it just doesn't pay to go much farther than we go."

You would think that when an outdoor concert attracts over 2,000 people that trash collection would be a major part of producing the events.  Parks Department employees move picnic tables around for the concerts and do a little picking up of litter, but Colt says trash hasn't been a major issue.

"One of the most amazing things about the concerts as this has grown is the way the people tend to pick up after themselves," he says. "I've been most impressed with the general demeanor of the concert audiences.  It's been a family function.  Everybody enjoys being down there.  It's an event where people see other people they don't normally see during the week.  There's a lot of interaction between families.  It's kid friendly.  It's pet friendly.  People have been very respectful, and that even includes picking up when they're done."

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