John Vanco, Amanda Brown Sissem, and Tom New join us to talk about the 2020 Erie's Blues & Jazz Festival. They, along with volunteers, helped adapt the event this summer from its traditional in-person format into a digital experience, appropriate for COVID-19. They discuss the live production, building a lineup, the desire to see the Erie community find a new sense of normal in this time, and much more.
Sponsored by: Erie Regional Chamber & Growth Partnership
Music: Kevin Macleod’s "pamgaea" available via Creative Commons Attribution-International 4.0. License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, No changes were made.
Music by audionautix.com. Audionautix's "Roboskater" by Jason Shaw available via Creative Commons Attribution-International 4.0. License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, No changes were made.
Transcript
JOHN VANCO: It was all live, warts and all, you know? You got to see everything that happened. There was a lot of chance for problems but also chance for happy accidents. And I think that's the way it turned out. There were a lot of happy accidents.
NARRATOR: That's John Vanco, artistic director of the Erie's Blues and Jazz Festival and director emeritus of the Erie Art Museum. He's one of three guest on this episode of Buzz Generated, a show that introduces listeners to businesses and community leaders that collaborate with the Northwestern Pennsylvania Innovation Beehive Network. We welcomed Vanco, along with Amanda Brown Sissem and Tom New, to discuss the 2020 edition of the festival, which this year changed from a Frontier Park Erie staple to a live-streamed virtual program on WQLN PBS and WQLN NPR 91.3.
Amanda Brown Sissem is a festival board member, the former director of Erie Arts and Culture, and serves in multiple positions at Edinboro University, first as director of alumni engagement, then as interim Assistant Vice President for Advancement. Later in the episode, Tom New, president and CEO of WQLN, also drops in, helping to explain how they put together the innovative collaboration. Along with all the hurdles they faced, the trio also talks about the mental health of the Erie community during COVID, what they learned in 2020 that they can apply to the event's future, and, of course, the role the Beehive played in branding the event.
Join host Tony Peyronel, the Executive Director of Entrepreneurial Development for Edinboro's center for Branding and Strategic Communication, as he sits down with our guests. Together, let's discover what the buzz is all about.
TONY PEYRONEL: In case any of our listeners are unaware of the creative venue change for this year's festival, I'll start with the quick reminder that the festival shifted from its usual home in Erie's Frontier Park to an entirely digital format, which included WQLN TV and radio providing live coverage of eight hours of performances over the weekend.
I'd like to start the interview with John Vanco, who founded the festival 28 years ago and has remained a central figure. John, please get us started by providing a quick history of the festival.
JOHN VANCO: In 1992, I guess it was, we had been presenting music regularly at the museum for more than a decade with a heavy emphasis on jazz and blues and new music and some world music. And Jim Spiegel was a real [INAUDIBLE], was on my board at the time. Approached me and said, hey, how about we do a jazz festival?
And we-- I had a mixed response to that suggestion. Because my specific aim in presenting music was an intimate production where the audience and the artists were right there together in a relatively small room and as acoustic as possible. Although that varies, of course, a lot. But the whole idea of putting together a festival that has thousands of people, just uh. I don't know.
I reluctantly agreed, and Jim and a number of other people pitched in and helped organize it. Joyce [INAUDIBLE] was mayor at the time. She was very supportive. And we pulled it off.
We had-- it was a one day event the first year. We had Mary Alice Brown and Roger Montgomery and some other people who were still around to perform, the local artists, and then Charles Brown, who's a remarkable jazz-drenched blues artist who was still performing at the time. I was so pleased to be able to present him. And I think it was that experience, being able to present Charles Brown, that drove me to continue to do it in subsequent years.
The next year, we went to two days. And we remained that way for 24 years. And then on the 25th year, Amanda stepped up along with a bunch of other people from Erie Arts and Culture. And as a part of my retirement from the art museum, we spun the festival off because it was clear that the next director of the art museum shouldn't be expected to also run a music festival.
We reformatted the festival to a three day event. We just made it an encompassing arts festival, not just a music festival. And I think that people are still learning that.
And one of the great opportunities for this year's event was to present all those different art forms that have been at the festival for the past three years. But which can be completely ignored if you can come and set up your tent or your little bit of space over there in front of the main stage and never get further than the beer tent. But all this time there have been all these other activities taking place over on the west side of the creek. And this year we really were able to mix it up in a meaningful way and let people know that the festival is an arts festival as well as a music festival.
TONY PEYRONEL: Given that tremendous history and your long involvement, I am wondering what it was like for you as you watched the COVID-19 pandemic shut down public events like this. Not only all around Erie, but really all around the world. Was there a time when you thought the event just would not happen this year, and how did you pivot so quickly to this unique solution?
JOHN VANCO: Yeah. There was a long time when I thought it wasn't going to happen. It seemed clear to me in February that we weren't going to have a festival in Frontier Park. It took a little while to sell everybody else on that understanding, because everybody's hopeful that this is going to be done. It's going to be over soon.
But it was pretty clear from what all the public health people were saying early on that this is a long term situation. It wasn't going to go away easily. So like everybody, the whole thing was so disorienting and it didn't seem as though life was normal at all.
It wasn't-- it was hard to think about what the options were. And, of course, after a few weeks of that you start to get into a routine, and you start to go to these all these Zoom meetings and whatever. And you think, well, all right. There is a possibility of a digital version of this.
But I wasn't thinking too hard about it, because I had found that the substitutes for a social life through the digital media were pretty lame. I mean, compared to the real thing, compared to going out with people, being with people, enjoying live music, watching it on your screen, it's not the same thing. And I was pretty much resigned that we just weren't going to do a festival this year.
And first for several months it was that way till Amanda met with Tom and Tammy, Tom New and Tammy Roach, about Cycle Fest, which had been our partner for the past several years. And Tom stepped up and offered to produce a televised event. And right from the beginning he said hey. I'll give you 4:00 to 8:00 PM on Saturday and 4:00 to 8:00 PM on Sunday. And it'll be all live and we'll do whatever we want.
And it didn't take me long to think, well, yeah. OK. We can do this. And I really liked the idea that Tom was insisting on this. Because immediately everybody started suggesting, well, we could throw this video in and that video in. And Tom said, no, no. Let's-- it needs to be a live event.
And that really, I think, was what made it for me that it was all live, warts and all. You got to see everything that happened. There was a lot of chance for problems, but also chance for happy accidents.
And I think that's the way it turned out. There were a lot of happy accidents.
AMANDA SISSEM: Just to add. I think once we were able to see the possibilities, we could go back and revisit what was so important to us about the festival that, first of all, our community. That this is a festival that's for our community by our community, and it doesn't happen without the artists. It doesn't happen without our supporters and the board and our partners that are able to create this every year.
And once we could see there's a light here that maybe we could do something with this, it became obvious that we could also then raise some funds and put them back into the hands of artists, production crews, and sound professionals. And I think for us that's such a major part of the festival that we're helping to pump some money into that part of the economy here.
So even if it was much smaller scale, we were able to do that as well. And that's very important to us. That's how we could maybe help raise some life into a sector that was struggling and really feeling the pain, and at least try to move some money around. So that became really important.
And then I think the community's mental health. And that was really something that struck our sponsors this year. That while they were being asked to support all kinds of basic needs in our community, which are obviously all very important and relevant to the battle against COVID-19, they all knew that our community members really needed a celebration. They needed something that felt like at least some element of normal. And they needed to be able to connect in ways when they couldn't connect face-to-face, but feel connected to one another.
And that's the power of the arts and that's the power of music that you can feel that connectedness. And it can inspire us and help replenish our souls just a little bit in that weekend. And we knew that if we could do it, we needed to do it for our community.
TONY PEYRONEL: I'm wondering-- a natural follow up. I'm wondering if there were other festivals and events that the team took inspiration from in trying to find COVID workarounds that still enabled arts enthusiasts to be effectively engaged. Were there other-- did you borrow some tactics from others?
JOHN VANCO: Not really. I didn't look at what other-- some other festivals were doing. Three Rivers festival in Pittsburgh had a very ambitious program, but that's a large organization with a full time professional staff and we are an all volunteer event this year.
So I looked at it a little bit and I thought, no, no. Let's just focus on this. Now that we've decided we're going to do something, let's realize-- understand that what we're doing is producing an eight hour long live television show.
It's not the same, obviously, as an in-person festival, but let's try to capture the spirit of that to the extent that we can and keep in mind that we're producing for television. And that it's the live aspect of it that's going to carry us past all the technical shortages that are bound to be there. Because people have come to expect really professional programming on television, of course. And so by doing it live and emphasizing the live quality of it, we can get away with maybe less than might be expected from a prerecorded professional production.
And this is not in any way to diminish what WQLN did. Their production is as professional as you could want. And the music, in particular, was really, really well done. It recorded beautifully and the video was equally wonderful.
As we progressed through the planning for this, we had an artistic committee that-- I don't know how many of us there were. I don't know, a dozen or more people, artists, and curatorial types that contributed to figuring out who was going to be involved in it. And I watched Tom New.
I think Tom's vision when he offered this was that it would be a series of bands, which, of course, the festival is a series of bands. But there's also a half hour break between each band and there's all this other stuff going on the other side of the park. The real breaking point for Tom was when he saw that we're going to put a calligrapher on the radio.
And it worked because we teamed that calligrapher up with a poet. And we had lots of poetry and dance and other art forms that don't normally get television exposure. And especially the local versions of these things. It was a wonderful experience.
I'm gonna have to say, nobody-- after the fact, nobody enjoyed it more than I did. It was really a balm for this soul that's been beaten down like all of us by COVID-19.
TONY PEYRONEL: Tom was probably afraid you were going to ask him to do a little stand up in between each of the acts. We laugh about it, but with his personality I suspect he could have pulled that off.
JOHN VANCO: Absolutely.
TONY PEYRONEL: Amanda, you've touched on already-- in a very articulate way, you've already touched on the mental health component of the coronavirus. And I know the first thing I thought of when I heard the Blues and Jazz Festival was going remote was Italy, a country that was hit hard and early by the pandemic.
I just remember the entire country being on lockdown, and citizens coming out on their balconies in the evening to play music to one another. And you touched on-- there obviously was an element in the feeling that music could also provide Erieites with some relief from all of the stress.
AMANDA SISSEM: I think we saw that play out. Once people understood-- and it took us a while, you know? I mean, we were joking early on, it doesn't matter what we do. There's going to be people who set up tents in that park. I mean, our audience is just so excited, and quite frankly, I mean, it's a tradition.
So every year at the same time people prepare for this. And so we knew it was going to take a [INAUDIBLE] bring that audience along. And we saw it, even in the last few weeks before the production.
We still have people saying, well, either-- people saying, what? You're going to put thousands of people in the park? You're going to make us sick.
And we'd say, no, no. Read the article or listen to the media. We're not doing that. We're changing this. It's going to be a live production.
Or we had people who really just didn't-- you know, they want their tradition. They wanted to be able to get together again, and we had to say we can't do that. That's not responsible for us to do.
So as we could bring that audience along with us to what we were going to try to do, we started to see that energy that we feel around the festival replicate this year, too. And businesses who wanted to provide a grab and go special or people who were already planning on how they were going to set their homes up for their-- bring their TV outside to help celebrate in a way that was unique but it was fun. And they were going to enjoy that festival weekend feel as much as they could.
So I think we saw elements of that tradition and that festival vibe, even though it was this completely different approach. And that was really important for us to see, too.
I would add that seeing the artists at the production of the festival, hearing them be so thankful that they could just be in each other's presence. So even though they had the social distance and they were spread out, really, the location was ideal because you could really spread people out. Just passing each other again, watching each other be able to perform from a distance, that renewed their spirit.
And they were very vocal about that. That it felt good just to be around each other again [INAUDIBLE] energy. And yeah. I mean, I think it's important for us to do. It's important for us to keep in mind throughout this world we're living in right now that if we can just help create those elements, seize those moments where we can build each other up and we can give each other a break from feeling worn down and stressed, that it's important to do.
And, again, I'm really thankful. I don't work on the artistic side. I work on the fundraising and marketing and community engagement side of it. And to see our sponsors come forward that have-- they've traditionally supported the festival.
We were able to really bring them back and they got it from the beginning. I mean, our presenting sponsor, Highmark, that's really what brought them back to the table this year was they knew how important it was just to help create mental wellness at this time.
And so when we saw that happen, we saw smiles on people's faces. We saw people wanting to connect and post. And even, again, artists being able to see each other in action again and feel that energy is really important.
TONY PEYRONEL: Well, Amanda, thanks so much. That answer actually segued over several of my next questions. But you made the obvious point that as planners, you did realize the strong emotional attachment to the Frontier Park venue. And you specifically worked on overcoming that potential disappointment and in building a virtual venue that really did build at least virtual togetherness among the attendees.
And you also touched on the artists responding really well to this. But I'm wondering-- I mean, you had-- it was a great lineup with Blind Boy Paxton and George Burton as the headliners, plus many great regional creatives. Was it any harder to book artists, though, when they realized they wouldn't simply be performing to a live audience in the park?
JOHN VANCO: Yeah. Well, that was not an issue at all. To the contrary. Artists are so eager for an opportunity to share their work. I could have booked anybody.
The challenges were that although the sponsors stepped up, they did so at a lower level than in the past. And we didn't have the money to transport people, to get people here and all the issues associated with moving people around. So the artists were not at all reticent to appear in a format that was just a television format as opposed to a live format. That wasn't a problem. It was the other technical challenges that were more of an obstacle.
But I had been thinking about presenting Blind Boy Paxton for a live event. And knowing the kind of show he puts on, I thought he would still be ideal. And it's only transporting one person. He lives in New York. We had to get him here and back.
At a bit of a loss for jazz, I was looking around regionally, see who I could find. But George Burton, who had actually appeared at the festivals a few years back, has an Erie connection. He married-- he lives-- George, I think, is originally from Philadelphia. He cut his teeth there and he's been in New York for the past decade or so.
He's really up and coming jazz star, is a remarkable pianist. He married a woman from Harbor Creek. When the pandemic hit, they relocated to Harbor Creek as a better place to hole up through this thing.
When I found out about that, I thought, OK. I got it. And he got his band mates to drive in, two wonderful players from Pittsburgh and Tim Warfield who lives down in York county, all of whom are outstanding jazz players. So we had a first class headliner without having all those transportation issues.
TONY PEYRONEL: That's great. That's great. Just happened to be in Harbor Creek anyhow. Who would think that?
JOHN VANCO: Exactly.
TONY PEYRONEL: What I'd like you to talk about, Tom, is what this involved from a production perspective. And I'm thinking you might be the best person to answer this. And I know that WQLN's wooded pavilion has been a great home for the Sounds Around Town Summer Music Series. But I can't imagine that it was designed in anticipation of an event like this. Would you tell us what was involved in pulling this all off from a production perspective?
TOM NEW: Sure. And I think that everybody that was here that weekend, they kind of understood what was involved. We had multiple cameras. We had four cameras that were in the field.
We had a portable switcher. And for those who don't know what a switcher is, you can imagine that you're in a control room and you have decisions to make. You select which camera you want to have on the air at the time. So that the whole event was switched live. We had that switcher that was down in the field.
Probably the most complicated part of this is probably the least sexy part of this. We had programming already scheduled for the weekend, programming that we received from NETA, National Educational Television Association, and from American Public Television. And so we needed permission to block that programming or to move that programming forward one week.
And, I mean, those little housekeeping chores are the things that they're not that much fun, right? I mean, the fun stuff is watching the guy [? choosing ?] the big boom cameras or walking around the field and having somebody carry your cable behind you. So, I mean, some of that background of stuff maybe it doesn't come across during an event.
But the one thing that I think that's unique about WQLN is the other television stations in town. And they were very generous, especially the folks from Erie News Now, with giving up time on their third channel. They don't necessarily have the opportunity or the ability to make that decision in town.
The folks that are right next door to us, they're run out of Dallas. Their control room is in Memphis, Tennessee. The folks at channel 12 and 35, their control rooms are in Elmira, New York. They're run out of Boston and Washington DC. So they don't have the-- they don't have the scrappiness of just being able to make a decision like we were able to do with this event and go for four hours on Saturday and an additional four hours on Sunday.
When I would talk to people about production behind this event, I said it's going to look very raw, like covering an event maybe back in the '70s or the '60s. But also the broadcast management of it was just like that. Because there used to be a time in Erie that you knew where the guy lived that owned 35. You could drive by his house.
You knew where Myron Jones, who owned Jet. You know where he lived. You knew where the [? Lamb ?] family lived in town. And that's all been taken away from us, you know? And so it's the one thing I think that's unique about public TV and Public Radio.
TONY PEYRONEL: And the fact that we all know where Tom New lives.
[LAUGHING]
TOM NEW: John. John. Those tomatoes that you threw at the house, I turned them into a very lovely Greek salad.
[LAUGHING]
JOHN VANCO: I already used up all my Tom New jokes before you showed up.
NARRATOR: This episode of Buzz Generated is sponsored by the Erie Regional Chamber and Growth Partnership, the voice of the business community in the region. The Chamber provides advocacy and access to people, education, and information so that businesses have the leadership, resources, and expertise needed for continued prosperity throughout the region. Schedule a time to meet with the Business Action Team and learn more about how the chamber can help, or visit the Erie Regional Chamber and Growth Partnership online at www.eriepa.com.
The growth of our vibrant community in Erie, PA depends on our dynamic business environment. The Erie Regional Chamber and Growth Partnership aims to provide just that. Let's get back to the episode.
TONY PEYRONEL: I know that you had many community partners involved in this effort, some of whom we've already mentioned. Our Center for Branding and Strategic Communication, which is Edinboro University's nodule in the Northwest PA Innovation Beehive Network, was honored to be able to lend a hand. Our work typically focuses on new businesses, but we take the larger view that enhancing the region's arts and culture is also an important factor in facilitating regional economic development.
Amanda, you were the one who reached out to us. I'm wondering what you thought we could add to the cause?
AMANDA SISSEM: So-- well, we knew a couple of things that were going to be challenging to us this year. and-- or had been challenging to us in the past and we hadn't had time to focus on, quite frankly. We mentioned a little earlier-- John mentioned that the life of the festival under the art museum. And then we had this transitional period when I was at Erie Arts and Culture that we teamed up and said this event needs to live on, and we need to figure out how to do that.
And so Erie Arts and Culture took on a very parental role in helping the festival transition. But while we were doing that we were building a 501(c)(3) that could continue to parent a festival moving forward and got our non-profit status in 2019. So we've never had our own branding.
We've had the art museum's brand. We've had Erie Arts and Cultures brand as our parent companies. And then every year everybody who knows the festival knows that we have a new artist every year design our t-shirts and our look for that year's festival, our posters. And this year was going to be a little different.
We weren't necessarily going to-- we didn't think we were going to have that, although we did have an artist that we worked with this year to create some artwork for us, who I think he'll be featured next year as well. And John can add a little bit about him. But we needed an identity, and we needed an identity for the festival as an entity in between the actual festival weekends.
So that was kind of what originally drew us to the work of the Beehive, just that creation of a logo and branding and a look that would separate the festival and give us our own two legs to stand on as a new entity that was going to have to continue in a future supporting itself. So that was one element of it.
But then also because we're working with an all volunteer board, we're changing everything about how we were going to hold the festival. We knew we were going to need some support with marketing and communications. And especially with social media, helping to really help us think through our plan, how we were going to inform people to celebrate with us, how we were going to highlight our artists, our supporters, get people engaged in new ways. So we were very, very thankful to have the support of your team in that as well.
JOHN VANCO: It was great. It took it took a lot of weight [? off us. ?] I mean, this came together in a remarkably short period of time, frankly.
And having the help of the Beehive was really, really important. It just took a whole load of stuff off of me. I know Amanda still had to be focused on that. But I was really grateful for it. And the product is really excellent as well.
AMANDA SISSEM: I mean, I think we had-- Scott would be able to tell us-- but maybe two days between when we finalized the logo and when we got it to Erie Apparel so that they could order the t-shirts and have them here by the festival weekend so that they could assist us in selling our t-shirts this year. Which I think if we didn't have their partnership this year, both the Beehive and Erie Apparel, we probably wouldn't have had merchandise this year.
So it was a very tight time frame. We needed more hands on deck, and we really needed the expertise that the Beehive could provide to create that look that was kind of-- live on with us as an organization, but also be flexible enough that we could add new artwork each year to some of our merchandise. And that's a big challenge. So we were very thankful to have the opportunity to work with the Beehive.
TONY PEYRONEL: Well, my faculty colleagues, Scott Gladd and Chris Lantinen did most of the heavy lifting for our Beehive. And from the beginning, I really felt their skills and personalities were perfectly suited for this partnership. Scott, as you've just mentioned, is a great graphic designer and ironically also does most of the design work for Erie Apparel, which was another critical festival partner.
Chris worked on social media with Bailey Williams. And I know Bailey is another individual who had her fingerprints all over this year's festival. Chris Lantinen, in fact, also produces the very podcast that we are currently part of. But I'd like to give you the opportunity to mention some of the other key partners that you'd like to tell our listeners about.
AMANDA SISSEM: I've talked a few times about our community support. We had three big sponsors come forward again that have supported us for many years. But Highmark, Blue Cross Blue shield. We had Giant Eagle and the Erie Community Foundation.
Which for the last few years, the Community Foundation has really supported the green elements of the festival, the sustainable elements of the festival, which has really grown in importance with us each year. We're very thankful to all of them.
The Chapman family, which has been a longtime supporter of the festival. And they're really a great representation of how families get involved. Jazz Erie, PNC Bank, Erie Ale Trail. They got involved with us last year and came to us this year and said, how do we help you out this year? So not only are they sponsors, but they also provided some grab-and-go options.
Erie Arts and Culture, there was not only staff support but we also were able to work with them on a grant that they had from the Doris Duke Foundation. This is one of the ways that they could put that grant to work, which I think is so important that sometimes you're looking for new financial support. But sometimes there's existing opportunities within the community that we've been able to leverage at the festival as well.
But then our media-- other media partners, too. Community Access Media for 24 hours for three days straight showed the past festival footage so that was really great. And actually working with the Beehive, we were able to get WFSE to extend programming for us in southern Erie county. That was fantastic.
WERG, Super Soul Saturday covered our headliners. The Reader, The Times, I mean, really, again, this was-- it's a great representation of how wide of a community celebration this was. It didn't take much for us to be on a conversation to say, hey, we're doing this, for whoever we were talking to to say, how can we play a part in that? How can we help extend this?
So from our response [INAUDIBLE] grab-and-go, businesses that offered some just fun for the weekend. And hopefully it drove a little business to them as well. That was our goal.
We didn't get any cut of any of what they were providing. It was really just to help encourage people to support local and get their festival supplies locally and to help them celebrate through the weekend.
All of the media partners, QLN at the heart of it with our live programming but everybody who picked up on that and promoted it or helped extend it, this is probably, by far, the largest footprint we've had with the festival in terms of potential audience. You can't take that and put it all in a park, what I just described.
So it was very interesting that in a year where we didn't know what we were going to do, we ended up getting really great support that stretched it even beyond what we normally are capable of doing. John, you want to add artistic partners?
JOHN VANCO: Yeah. And it's a long list, so I'm not-- I won't-- I can't mention everybody, but there are a few key people. Bailey Williams, whom you already mentioned, is a key component of this. Bailey was the producer a couple of years ago. I never had a better producer than Bailey. She's a remarkable individual, and she took on the social media and the website and did a fantastic job of it.
I have to mention Kelly Armor. And as they say these days, full disclosure, she's my wife. She doesn't need me to make accomplishments in the arts.
She has been working with a lot of folk artists, and especially new American artists, and was able to bring them into the mix. And they've been part of the festival the past couple of years. But, again, all of that is kind of invisible to a lot of the festival goers who just plunked themselves down there in front of the main stage.
She also was key in coming up with the pairings of artists that we felt was really important, especially when working with the environmental organizations. We wanted environmental organization to have a presence. We didn't want a boring presentation, just a bunch of talking heads. So we teamed in most-- in almost every case, we teamed the environmental organization up with some artists, and they worked together to say something about what they were doing and to do it in an artistic way.
I have to really, really say thanks to the Dance Consortium of Erie, especially to Kristen Weibel and to [? Tanya ?] Hunter, who were remarkable. They pulled so much together in a short period of time. Not only the art all the onsite dance, but also the yoga classes, the socially distanced yoga classes that took place in the park. And most of the participants in that were actually at home, viewing them online.
The Artist Association-- the Northwest Pennsylvania Artist Association had set up a finger drawing from life session and that got rained out. They were active participants. And [INAUDIBLE] Laurie, I got to thank [INAUDIBLE] particularly for her connections to all the environmental organizations and her willingness to work with this idea of teaming them up with artists.
There are so many more. I can't mention everybody. The only other one that has to be mentioned is Abdullah Washington, the Big Wash, who was a fantastic emcee. This is his second year as emcee, and he was just so willing and able to go with it.
We don't know where we're going next. The cameramen are racing around to find where we're going next, and he's got to fill that time. And as Tom New has pointed out, you can't really put mimes on the radio.
And he filled the time, and he did a-- he had several different call and response things, as Tom was pointing out. It's still in his head. The W-E-A-R-E-E-R-I-E. Big Wash did a fabulous job pulling it all together and I'm so grateful.
Not to mention all the artists that participated. It was great.
TONY PEYRONEL: And the Big Wash did look good in the t-shirt. I have to say, he was the first person I saw wearing that great Scott Glad design logo for the festival. So the Big Wash filled an important role there. He was one of the first people to parade around in one of those great t-shirts.
As successful as this year's festival was, due in part to the wonderful support received from those just mentioned and many more who couldn't be mentioned because of our time limits, I can't help but wonder if the challenges created by the pandemic were still able to disrupt any specific plans or features that you had hoped to implement this year. Was there anything new or different you wanted to try this year that you just could not because of the circumstances?
JOHN VANCO: I can't say that there is specifically anything that we were-- that I was planning that would have been noticeably different. The festival has consistently been an incremental progress event. Every year after the festival, we sit around and we talk about what went well, what we could have done better, what new ideas might have occurred to any of us. And we try then to incorporate that in the following year's event.
This year, we threw everything out the window. Said all right. We're going to make a TV show.
TOM NEW: But the best part about that meeting, John, was everybody agreed next year this will be back in Frontier Park and it's going to be so much better.
[LAUGHING]
JOHN VANCO: Indeed.
AMANDA SISSEM: Yeah. I think there were weird little opportunities that kept presenting themselves, though. Like the fact that we had a wonderful jazz pianist in Harbor Creek that we had access to a baby grand in the studio at WQLN, which you couldn't get on that stage in Frontier, right? So it's like all these little weird things started to pop up that we could leverage, which we couldn't have anticipated. But they presented themselves and made for an even better event.
So I think it was the open-mindedness, too, of the team that we were working with to see the opportunity in this and to run with it. I even think about when John approached the board-- John wrote a letter to the board to inform us of how he felt about the reality that we would not be able to have this festival this year, in its 28th year. Even our discussion at that point in the spring.
And John-- I mean, there's a rhythm to this festival. There is rhyme and reason for how we do things and when we do them. And everybody had to be incredibly flexible this year to pull this off.
And we were able to-- John, who is most protective of the quality of what is presented at this festival for a good reason. That that has gotten us 28 years. He-- for him to say, all right. Well, maybe let's look at this. Maybe we don't have to cancel.
Maybe we can look at it differently. And for Tom to step up at the time that he did and offer some innovative solutions with QLN. I mean, it just-- I think if it were not for the flexibility and the openness of the people who work on this event, we wouldn't have had one this year.
Because we had every reason not to do it this year, and instead we said, no. We're going to try. We're going to see what happens.
We're going to put our best foot forward, and we're going to try to give something back to our community. And we see the results of that. So I'm very thankful for everybody who works on this team.
TONY PEYRONEL: I know that we are all hoping the coronavirus will be a distant memory by next summer, but what about next year when it comes to the Blues and Jazz Festival? Was there anything learned this year that might still be applied when people, thankfully, are again able to pitch tents in the park? I'm assuming that some of the innovation that was required for this year might be worked into future festivals.
JOHN VANCO: Yeah, I think that's true. I think that the other arts and the environmental messages were a revelation to a lot of the people who viewed it. That they just didn't think about it. Didn't realize that all this was going on while they're sitting in their tent.
We want to take that another step. I'm not quite sure what that's going to be but there's going to be a way to engage that audience, even if they won't move from their lunch. Or we're going to bring them into the other aspects of the festival one way or another.
AMANDA SISSEM: One other thing that came up this year is an opportunity, and we didn't even-- we talked about it actually Saturday night maybe when we were talking about what went well and what didn't go so well day one. We have been talking about making the festival a multi-venue event for a couple years now and haven't been able to stretch it in that way.
And then all of the sudden this year, A, first of all, you have past festivals happening. You have the live festival happening. So you have like this-- these layers of the festival happening all at the same time.
But we actually noticed that we had a multi-venue festival this year. We had activity at the park and we had activity at QLN. And here we were, years after talking about trying to make this a multi-venue event, we were piloting it as we did it this year. And we didn't even realize it until we were in the moment.
This has given us some things to think about. I think just from a community celebration aspect, this year really reinforced what we felt like we already knew. But we saw it play out differently that this is the community's event. This is a tradition.
And to see the mayor's office do an intro for us, and to see all these other partners that wanted to step up. I think as we go into 2021, we have the opportunity to really grow that, too, and leverage that further. And I'm excited about that.
TONY PEYRONEL: Well, thanks so much to each of you. This has been a wonderful conversation. And congratulations on a great event and the role that each of you played. I'd just like to close the show by asking the three of you if there is anything additional you'd like to share with our listeners.
JOHN VANCO: Hey, pray for a vaccine.
TOM NEW: I'm on a statewide call every Wednesday, and we start the call 15 minutes early just because we like to catch up, to do a check in with how people are doing at different stations. And so the check in this week was, did you do anything over the weekend? And I mentioned that on our radio station we had a calligrapher.
And I got to tell you. In all corners of the state, including the central part of the state, that got such a howl. John, I never stop having fun at your expense.
AMANDA SISSEM: I think we just want people to know that we want to be in person as much as everybody else does, but we're really, really thankful that people came along with us. That they tried this. Thankful for our volunteers.
We didn't really mention that-- we had to really-- normally, we have over 100 volunteers at the festival during the weekend. And we had to pare that down quite a bit. But volunteers always playing a central role, and they did again this year.
Our friends of the festival, so the individuals who step up and they give to support the festival. It takes all of us to pull this off, no matter what it looks like. And we're just really thankful that our community loves this as much as we do.
Every Saturday of the festival, John normally pulls the whole team up on the stage. And it is-- it's one of my favorite moments, because you get to see the volume of the people who are celebrating with you. It's a good reminder of why we do this every year.
We love this obviously, or we would not put our heart and soul into it like we do. But we love our community. We're very proud to present this to our community.
TOM NEW: [INAUDIBLE] there's been so many things that we've had in this town that are no longer here. I mean, Erie Summer Festival of the Arts or any event this summer. It was just-- it just feels good that maybe we got a little bit of normal back into the summer.
TONY PEYRONEL: No, I agree. Thank you very much. Thanks to each of you.
JOHN VANCO: Thanks for doing it.
AMANDA SISSEM: Yeah, thank you.
TOM NEW: Have a great day.
NARRATOR: The Northwest Innovation Beehive Network works to enhance business expansion and development in the Erie area. The Beehive is made up of five grant-funded centers that collaborate to encourage business growth. The centers work together to form the Hive Network, while each location operates in its own specialized area of expertise.
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You've been listening to Buzz Generated. This podcast was released through Edinboro University's Center for Branding and Strategic Communication. It's produced by Keith Hepler and Chris Lantinen.
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