Last year Syracuse’s blues scene almost faded to black. The New York State Blues Festival, started in 1991, was nearly kaput even though acts were booked and arrangements had been made. Money was short and sponsors were scarce. The future of the Blues Fest looked grim.
Todd Fitzsimmons, president of the festival, had to face that reality earlier this year and offered to make serious concessions to guarantee that Syracuse would not be without a Blues Fest for a second consecutive year. If acts for 2011 were booked, advertisements were placed and people were psyched, only for the fest to be cancelled again, it might have been the end for good.
“I had agreed to personally cover the distance if we didn’t hit the numbers we needed so I could get the board’s approval to get there,” Fitzsimmons says. “So it was increasingly going to fall on my back, especially if it rained. Worstcase scenario, maybe $40,000 or $50,000.”
It was a terrifying proposition, but one Fitzsimmons, the founder and owner of Syracuse-based Fitzsimmons Systems Inc., a provider of fuel tank systems, bore for love of the festival. Luckily, his passion paid off when opportunity presented itself in an unexpected form, not by way of sponsorship, but partnership instead.
Local news outlet CNY Central had been planning to host a family festival at the Inner Harbor. According to Chris Geiger, president and CEO of CNY Central, they had been considering the idea for some time.
“We’d been looking at the Inner Harbor because it’s such a great venue and we wanted to start putting on and promoting events,” Geiger says. “Although we’ve been involved with many, many events—just about any local event we have some role in—this was our first time really putting it on and taking full responsibility. To have Todd’s expertise and his group running it—it’s good.”
The resulting synergy of music, attractions and games for families and blues-lovers, children and baby-boomers resurrects a festival sorely missed in 2010.
This year the New York State Blues Festival, running Friday, July 8, through Sunday, July 10, at the Inner Harbor, West Kirkpatrick Street, returns with acts that range from local favorites The Super Delinquents and Cornbred, to modern living legends Bryan Lee, Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters and the return of the headliner from the area’s very first Blues Fest in 1991, Magic Slim. Add to that a blues family reunion with Jose Alvarez and Los Blancos and the surprise addition of Zydeco master Terrance Simien and Blues Fest isn’t just back—it’s back with a vengeance.
Free, for a Fee
Fitzsimmons recently met with Larry Luttinger, president of the Central New York Jazz and Wine Festival slated for July 29 to 31, and the two had a sobering conversation. “A few months ago Larry told me, ‘Todd, really your goal this year needs to be to survive. That’s all of us in the fest business and all of us in cultural and charitable organizations. Our goal this year is not to try and grow, but to survive.’” Throughout 20 years of Blues Fest, the organization has broken even. Some years money is made, others it is lost. State money, sponsors, weather and other variables make the free festival business a risky one. In the spring of 2010 WTKW-FM 99.5 (TK99), the festival’s largest media sponsor in terms of exposure, stepped aside, explaining that the Blues Fest was competition for their Blues, Brews and BBQ event earlier in the summer. Fitzsimmons couldn’t understand the logic.
“I fully support that festival,” he says.
“Our mission is to perpetuate, promote and cultivate the blues and that’s what they help us do. I think the fact that they have a market for their festival is due in large part to the popularity of the Blues Fest. The blues has grown over the past 20 years and I said, ‘Hell, we’d hang your posters for you.’ So we lost them.”
This made CNY Central’s role all the more crucial. The Blues Fest’s advertising budget took a significant hit with the loss of TK99, so adding CNY Central’s three stations, WSTM-Channel 3, WTVH-Channel 5 and WSTQ-Channel 14 (on Time Warner Cable’s channel 6), some 500 TV ads and exposure to multiple counties catapulted the Blues Fest’s normal reach far beyond the standard 2 to 3 million people. It was as if the blues gods heard Fitzsimmons’ prayers.
“They go to 15 counties we’ve never really gone to,” he says. “Ninety percent of our marketing is done right here in Onondaga County, so to be able to reach all the way to Watertown, Norwich, Utica and some of those others—it’s huge.”
The other benefit of CNY Central’s involvement came with the addition of family attractions and a friendlier location. While Clinton Square has the urban charm that so fits the blues, it’s a difficult venue for a listener to occupy comfortably for an extended period of time. Combine heat on concrete, limited space, little shade and a difficult place to entertain children and the venue quickly loses appeal.
Now, trade that for rides, games, grass, fields, the Creek Walk and open space for blankets, chairs, Frisbees and future expansion of the festival, located not that far from downtown, and the benefits suddenly become more apparent. Traditionally, Blues Fest attendance surged in the evenings after tepid afternoon attendance. This year could be different.
“CNY Central wanted a family focus. I like the idea, but at first I just couldn’t get my head around it,” Fitzsimmons says. “Then I started to really dig in because there are so many people that have families and they’re home and they don’t want to ditch their kids to go to Blues Fest. Now the whole family can go down for a few hours and everyone is happy and it could expose a lot of the kids, a lot of the people, to blues, which is really our mission. So when I thought of it in those terms, in how it can cultivate new crowds and audiences for us, it serves our mission directly, probably better than what we’ve done in the past. A lot of times blues happens in nightclubs.”
Young Bloods
The capitalized family aspect helps the festival on several fronts. From a marketing perspective, a more diverse festival demographic adds appeal for a variety of new sponsors. From Fitzsimmons’ perspective, a new audience experiences the annual event and its singular music. From a musician’s perspective, it’s the best thing the Blues Festival could do.
Guitarist Jose Alvarez, who holds a special place in the Syracuse music scene as a founding member of Los Blancos and currently tours with the world-renowned Terrance Simien, beams at the thought of children being such an important part of this year’s festival.
“That’s a big thing,” he notes in a phone interview from Mexico. “If you look at the age range of people that attend these things, and of course I’ve been doing
it for 18 years now, it hasn’t been replaced by a younger generation yet. Young kids are not getting turned on to this music. That’s part of what I love about Terrance is that he’s got an educational thing, a program for kids. We’ve played to thousands and thousands and you know, if 20 out of a thousand come out being kids searching out the music when they’re older, that’s worth it.”
Fitzsimmons regrest not having the experience Blues Fest kids will have this year. “The kids are gonna be there, riding the rides and playing games and getting to see this great American art form,” he says. “The younger kids love it if they’re exposed to it. My kids do. People I know, friends, family, cousins it’s reached and touched, they love it. It’s just exposing them to it.”
Alvarez has also seen the immediate impact it can have. “I mean, you can see it on their faces. Complete discovery.” When Alvarez was 14, he had a similar moment when he saw festival closer Ronnie Earl play live for the first time at the National Guitar Summer Workshop in New Milford, Conn. “It was like, ‘This is the guy I want to sound like.’ It was instant,” he remembers. “The first note was like, ‘So that’s how you play blues guitar.’” Since then, Alvarez and Earl have become good friends, staying in touch over the years. Alvarez calls Earl his “guitar guru and really my guru in general.” That came in handy when Fitzsimmons tried to get blues guitarist Earl to the festival this year. Earl stopped traveling for shows years ago, though he continues to play in and around his home in Providence, R.I., and hasn’t been to Syracuse in more than a decade. He’s the type of artist people travel to see.
Alvarez met Colin Aberdeen, guitarist and lead singer for Los Blancos, at the same guitar workshop where he met Earl, but a year earlier. Like Earl, he and Aberdeen began a friendship that spans 20 years. “That’s longer than any musical relationship, or relationship period that I’ve ever had,” Alvarez says. “Colin’s a nurturer, you know? He was the first one to make me feel like I could do it. He was the first person to go, ‘Yeah, you know what you’re doing and the way that you approach it is right.’ He’s always been quite the encourager.”
In 1995, Aberdeen told Alvarez about a guitarist position available with local blues legend Roosevelt Dean so Alvarez moved from Mexico City to Syracuse in the middle of winter. Although Alvarez only expected to stay about six months, it turned into five years and in 1997, he formed Los Blancos with Aberdeen, Steve Winston and Paul Rohrig.
Today, Alvarez tours with Simien, who was invited to join the lineup on Sunday when singer and guitarist Nick Curran had to cancel. This means Alvarez has a busy schedule that day. “I’m playing with Terrance in Cleveland the day before and we’re done around 9 p.m.,” Alvarez explains. “So I’d really like to make the {12:30 p.m.} brunch gig at Empire Brewing Company {120 Walton St.} with the Blancos, then of course we play at 6 p.m. or so and we’ve got Pete McMahon lined up and a bunch of old friends and then maybe Ronnie Earl, not sure yet, but hopefully. And, of course, Terrance and the boys.”
The only break for Alvarez on Sunday may come when the Soul of Syracuse, or SOS, plays from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. This Syracuse supergroup of sorts includes Mark Hoffmann, Carolyn Kelly, Dave Liddy, Pete McMahon, Gerry Neely, Dave Olsen, Phil Petroff and more. Fitzsimmons jokes, “Maybe we’ll have Jose sit in with SOS, too—really work him out.”
He also discussed the logistics of moving Alvarez between stages, “I thought about it,” Fitzsimmons says seriously. “We’re gonna get one of those Lady Gaga strings he can fly over the crowd with or a jet pack and shoot him over to the other stage. But we might dump him in the water.”
As the festival approaches, anticipation grows, for audiences, artists and, perhaps most of all, for Fitzsimmons. But hopes are high and those involved seem fully invested in making the 20th anniversary a memorable event.
“We’re able to promote to such a wide audience,” says Geiger. “It really motivates us to make it a success. We want to expose so many more people to the festival than in the past and make it bigger and better. We want to help propel it forward and promote the Inner Harbor. It’s beautiful down there. With the sun setting, it’s a great venue.”
Fitzsimmons hopes the new venue will help him reach a new audience as well, one he wants to inspire.
“I think the reason I like blues so much, the reason I do this, is it feeds my soul,” he says. “The best way to feed my soul is to feed others. Somebody told me that once. If you can turn somebody on to something, you can change their life.”
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