A Musical Dream

A number of years ago, Jan and Grace and I took a vacation. I managed to rent a condo in "Lake Of The Ozarks" Missouri, because that was what was available through this place I use where I can rent unused condos for $273 a week. (It's higher than that now, but not a lot.)

While we were there, we took two days and went to see Branson, that we'd heard so much about.

I won't go into details about all that here, except to say this was the third week in October. This is a wonderful time of the year, weather-wise, but it's not exactly prime vacation time.

There were other vacationers there in Branson, but it was quite obvious that we vacationers were in short supply, because there was very little traffic, and no huge crowds anywhere we went.

One of the shows we went to was that of Shoji Tabuchi, the Japanese violin player who had trained as a classical violinist in Japan, then moved to Nashville so he could "learn to fiddle." Now he has his own show in Branson, in his own building, where he puts on two shows a day, one in the afternoon, and one in the evening.

When I was in his theater, waiting for the show to start, I looked around, totally amazed.

There were over three thousand people in that place!

I mean it. We had heard that his auditorium had a capacity of 4,500, and the place looked to be maybe eighty percent full.

And this during the third week of October!

Next, I began looking at just who it was in this audience.

What I saw was that there were about 35% of the audience about Jan's and my age (in our 50's at the time), maybe 10% who were younger than us, and more than half the audience was older than we were.

Then I realized something: this was exactly the same demographic as the audience that attends concerts for my band! This could easily have been an audience waiting for the start of a concert by the Mississippi Community Symphonic Band.

Except for two things.

First, there were over three thousand people here.

And second, each one of them had paid about $40 to get in.

I did some quick math in my head, and realized that the gate on this one concert grossed $120,000.

And this for a matinee show during the third week of October.

If he does two shows a day, that's a gross of nearly a quarter of a million dollars a day, during the slack season.

Of course, Shoji doesn't get to keep but a fraction of that. I feel certain that the myriad of ticket sellers - from tour companies to bus lines to online ticket merchants - get to keep probably half of that. This is the marketing expense.

Even so, that leaves poor Shoji with only $100,000 to $150,000 a day to run his business. During the slack season.

By now, I'm sure that even over this internet blog, you can see the light bulb glowing over my head.

If over 3,000 people a day will pay $40 apiece to go see this show, and this exact same demographic audience is so enthusiastic about my band concerts, doesn't it just make sense to try to start...

The International All-Star Concert Band

in Branson?

This would actually be more of a wind symphony than a band, instrumentally, meaning there would be only one player on a part, except in the clarinets, trumpets, and trombones, where there would be two per part.

This would put the band at about 50 players.

If I could get even half of Shoji Tabuchi's audience size, let's say 1,500 people, twice a day, at a net-to-the-business of $20 each, that would be $60,000 a DAY income to the business.

Could I pay 50 musicians and run all the rest of the infrastructure on this kind of income?

Absolutely yes.

Let's figure it annually.

Here's the income side. If we put on shows twice a day, six days a week, eleven months - no, let's make it 48 weeks a year, that's 576 shows a year. Okay, let's go a bit conservative and make it 500 shows a year. With 1,500 patrons a show, that's 750,000 patrons a year (yes, it is! Figure it yourself), at $20 net per patron, that would be a net after marketing income of $15 million annually.

On the expense side, let's start with the musicians, since they would be the biggest expense. If I average paying them $40,000 a year, that's $2 million. Let's add on another million for employee benefits. If we spend another $2 million on office staff and $9 million on facilities and debt reduction, that still puts our expenses below our income.

Okay, that means the business (money) side of this is feasible. Don't forget, we're basing the income on an audience size that could easily be exceeded, once "the word gets out." ("Madge, you have GOT to go see the International All-Star Concert Band the next time you go to Branson. They are so good!")

But can you imagine the QUALITY of the band I could put together if I could pay my musicians this much? I personally know five or six musicians I would hire in a heartbeat to play for this band, musicians of a caliber that would make your eyes bug out. Truly. And most of these folks would absolutely jump at the chance to have a regular job with a regular paycheck AND BENEFITS (namely, health insurance) and have nothing to do but play their instrument twice a day.

My mind reels with the additional possibilities as well. Besides playing the concerts, the musicians could teach private lessons in facilities we provide. During the summer months, we could have the International All-Star High School Band Camp - it could be master classes with the staff musicians and one concert a day - one week of camp for the students, and six different camps over the summer. The possibilities are limitless.

About the time these ideas were roiling through my head, I was also working on the early concept of what later became my American Frontier Suite Series project. Essentially, this project was born of two truisms I had found out. First, that audiences love to hear music they already know and can sing along with in their heads, and second, that there is a ton of music in the public domain (meaning we don't have to pay anybody to use it) that people today still know and love to hear.

When I connected these truisms with the International All-Star Band concept, another light bulb went on over my head.

Why not have, in a theater right beside and in the same complex as the other one...

The Great American Sing-Along!

This would be another theater with capacity equal to the All-Star Band's theater (I'm thinking 5,000 capacity? Why restrict ourselves?), but with a smaller stage, and perhaps large rear-projection screens to show everyone a better view of the people on stage, and the words of the songs during the sing-alongs.

On the stage would be the emcee, a piano player, and possibly a bass player and a drummer. Whether there would be more players is yet to be seen.

The Emcee would be a funny and vibrant personality, and of course, we would hire professional writers to create his patter that he'd pour out to the audience between songs.

And the songs, of course, would be the wonderful sing-along songs, such as "Bicycle Built For Two," "The Band Played On," "K-K-K-Katie," and many more. I have a list of over a hundred candidate songs.

Not only would the audience have a blast singing along with these grand old songs, part of the business would be that we would audio and video record the audience singing these songs, with professional production (mixing, balance, etc.) during the recording. With today's technology, we could have audio recordings on CD for sale to the audience AS THEY LEFT THE CONCERT! We could have them sign up for a video (DVD) that would be ready within an hour, certainly by the next day.

The audience would eat it up - I bet more than half would want a recording of themselves singing at the Great American Sing-Along - and it would be another profit center for the business.

Okay, now we have two auditoriums featuring musical events in the same complex. What would be more natural than to connect them with a very large and pleasant atrium that naturally has several concession stores, restaurants, and other attractions?

One more profit center for the business.

One side note here - if we did the atrium-concession business, I would NOT want to overprice everything, as so many of these types of establishments do. If a regular restaurant or clothing and gimcrack store can make a regular profit at regular prices, then I don't want to charge inflated prices just because we have a "captive audience." A regular profit should be just fine, thank you.

Yes, there's a lot more to this concept.

But there are only two things left to consider, if this is ever to get beyond the mere dream stage.

Financing and startup.

This would never get beyond the dream stage without advance funding. We'd have to have probably at least 20 acres of land. We'd need excellent architects to design the two auditoriums, the atrium, the offices, the adjunct buildings (such as equipment storage, practice rooms, music studio rooms, classrooms, meeting rooms, etc.), the ingress, egress, and parking facilities, and once all these are designed, we'd need to build them, to include the contractors, the permits and fees, all that.

I have no clue how much all this would cost. Off the top of my head, I would take a wild stab at $30-40 million. Then we would need enough capital to pay for one year of construction (just operating expenses of management during construction) and two years of operating expenses while the business got its feet on the ground. The most important part of this startup would be the marketing, of course. If we don't get the audience, we won't have any income. Figure another $40 million?

So this business could get rolling and be totally profitable for under $100 million.

Has anyone out there got that much to invest?

I don't know anyone, but that's why it's just a dream at this time.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

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