To be fair, Gerald Dunn, the venue's entertainment coordinator, didn't have much advance notice. He caught Scott-Heron at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., where Kansas City's American Jazz Museum had just officially joined the Smithsonian Affiliations Program. "I went to the dressing room, talked with him for a bit and let him know that we wanted to bring him to KC," Dunn explains. Scott-Heron then set a date that left the venue little more than two weeks to get the word out, and the Blue Room mailed announcements of the show to patrons who have signed up for its mailing list and members of the Black Poets Collective. Relying solely on these mailings and a few radio plugs, the Blue Room managed to attract a respectable, wildly enthusiastic crowd.
However, even when the club books shows a month or more in advance, it often turns to the same promotion methods. "It's a silly operation," says Bill O'Connor, who did his part by playing four Scott-Heron songs on his three KKFI 90.1 shows, including his Armstrong to (Weather Report keyboardist Joe) Zawinul jazz show on Wednesday from noon to 2 p.m. "Mike Metheny [editor of Jam] has gone through the roof trying to find out information about the place. He didn't even find out about the show until Monday. People wonder why it doesn't work -- it's because they're not doing the basic, simple things." O'Connor, an occasional bartender at the club, says even the drink-dispensing facet of the Blue Room's operation is disorganized. "All the ice is in the basement," he explains. "The whole situation is ass-backward."
Dunn says the Blue Room aims to use its mailing list to construct a solid core of regulars. "It seems to be difficult for a lot of jazz venues to build an audience," he notes (a shocking admission for someone located in the cradle of jazz). "No clubs other than the Grand Emporium are doing any major presenting, which requires that you build an audience." Short of visiting the venue to sign up for its mailing list, interested jazz fans can consult the Blue Room's two-month schedule in Jam or call 816-474-2929 for a recorded message listing the next week's shows.
The Blue Room's publicist, Adrie Taylor, claims the venue's visibility should improve now that she's been alerted to computer problems that prevented the delivery of the past month's press releases. "The network server has been extremely screwed up," she says. Taylor says the venue doesn't have enough funding to plaster the city with posters. "Do you think someone would volunteer to design them and print them? We wouldn't have any problem getting them out."
A genuinely classy venue that offers a refreshing no-smoking policy and hundreds of engaging historic artifacts to browse, the Blue Room attracts repeat visitors and generates positive word of mouth. But while word of mouth is a time-honored method of concert promotion, it certainly is not the fastest, which is why revolutions can come and go while a large percentage of the listening population remains regrettably unaware.
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