JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Brian Austin Whitney Blog Monday, April 9th, 2007

We do use the Roadtrips to choose a Live Artist of the Year at the awards show. That artist get's a slot during the awards show to perform. In the last 2 cases however the best artists we saw performed at the previous awards show. We could exclude those who perform there, but often that's the only chance we get to see those folks live (i.e. we have performers come to the awards from all over the world including many places we never otherwise visit) so it seems bad to exclude that show in the process. We do note the best performers during each tour and it's not uncommon for us to recommend them for all sorts of things after that fact. It's how I got to know many of the artists I've forward to conferences and house concerts and music festivals etc. Until I see you perform live, I can't really recommend you. But that's not a specific carrot to put out in front of folks. I never when or where those opportunities will come. I also don't want to turn the Roadtrip events into callous opportunities for folks to audition and then not connect with anyone else. I want folks who "get" the point of the events to participate. If we don't start with those types, then the events would be shallow wastes of time. In the past getting those types of folks was probably too easy. We'd have 75-150 people at every event we set up no problem. I think one major reason for the decrease is we took 2006 off to work on the awards and lost touch with everyone. That's clearly part of this problem. When you disappear off the scene for a year, people forget and move on. Unfortunately the only fix for that is to get back on the horse and ride. It may just take a weak year to get back to better years going forward.

Brian