The CBA President has written a monthly column for the Bluegrass Breakdown for years with the goal of providing a synopsis of what our volunteer Association is doing and planning. The list of items to mention keeps getting longer as our activities increase and we see changes in who is overseeing activities. If I leave anyone out, I apologize.
I just reviewed the ballot for this year’s Directors election and immediately noticed how different our new Board of Directors will look for 2017-2018. There are 11 candidates for 11 seats (Maria Nadauld withdrew her candidacy) and we will have 3 women and more performing musicians than have sat on the Board in years. Half the Board will be under 60 years of age with 3 under the age of 40. This will be a very different group of Directors than we have seen in a long while.
October is always a big month for the CBA and here is a lineup of activities: The Fall Campout & Annual Membership Meeting, the election and seating of new officers, the IBMA World of Bluegrass and the kickoff of the Annual CBA Youth Program Scholarship Fund Drive. This year we will also add the return of the San Francisco Bluegrass & Old Time Festival (SFBOT) to our activities list. The SF CBA membership group is reviving the SFBOT. All these activities are described elsewhere in this paper.
Deb Livermore is the new coordinator of the Fall Campout and all contracts have been signed for the event in Lodi and Deb is now signing up volunteers. The entertainment at the Saturday night dinner will be a new CBA Youth Band, North Country Blue, consisting of Megan January, Daisy Kerr, Tessa Schwartz and Ida Winfree. These four young musicians met at our events and all have participated in KOB and Academy. They had their debut as the Good Old Fashion Bluegrass Festival a month ago.
Janet Peterson, co-director of our CBA Music Camp, has retired. Everyone who has interacted with Janet over the last few years has fallen in love with her and I feel like I have lost a good friend. Janet was the first person I looked for each year when I drove onto the Fairgrounds for our week in June. We hope that Janet will make the trek down from Washington for future events and wish her well in her “retirement.” Peter Langston is continuing on as director of Music Camp and his codirector will be Tina Webster. Tina worked with Janet in 2017 and, in addition, led many of the Music Camp jams. We are delighted that there will be no disruption in the Music Camp transition and know that the combination of Peter and Tina is a great one. Peter and Tina will also attend IBMA in Raleigh this year as part of the CBA Team.
Hotel reservations for the January Great 48 Hour Jam in Bakersfield are selling briskly (in August) so 2018 promises to be even bigger and better than previous years according to Jack Pierce, Coordina-tor of the event and Kern County Area VP. The Friday night concert band will be announced soon and tickets will go up for sale on tix. com. CBA VolunTeen Ida Winfree has volunteered to coordinate the Kids on Bluegrass performance for Saturday night. Any young musicians attending may contact Ida through cbayouthprogram@ gmail.com.
Sonoma County CBA member and musician Kevin Russell has stepped up to direct the 2018 Sonoma County Bluegrass & Folk Festival. Mark Hogan (retiring Director) brought this exciting news to the Board at the August meeting. The long running Sebastopol event, a collaboration with the Sonoma County Folk Society, has been in existence for 15 years and was at risk of ending with Mark’s retirement. Kevin has jumped in with both feet and lined up a pretty spectacular show for 2018 which will be announced in December. Kevin has the skills and experience to take over this popular event and has hit the ground running.
Retiring Board member and Board Chairman Tim Edes will continue to produce A Night at the Grange in Morgan Hill in February and is bringing out the bluegrass band Volume 5 to perform. Tim has produced this always sold out event for 15 years and we are happy to report that he is not completely retiring from volunteering with the CBA to keep this venue up and running. Tickets will be available on tix.com so stay tuned for more info.
We are pretty pleased with our ticket site www.tix.com for all our events to allow fans to easily purchase tickets on line. None of this would be possible without the enormous contribution made by CBA member Gary Mansperger who has painstakingly pushed us into the digital ticketing age. When the Board discussed electronic ticketing about five years ago Gary stepped up to research, develop and direct our effort and has spearheaded us since. We all owe Gary our gratitude. There is also space with each ticket purchase to donate to the CBA Youth Program which has helped expand our funding for events.
We just returned from the annual and popular Golden Old Time Campout in Poker Flat, Lake Sonoma. The event was hot this year and so were the jams. We held our Saturday Board meeting on site so that more people could attend. Retiring Board member Steve Goldfield has been instrumental in making certain our old-time community is well represented in our Association. Steve has plans to make certainold time music and musicians will continue to be an important part of the CBA and is mentoring others to take his place in the future.
Don’t forget to renew your membership so that your vote can be counted in the election. Your membership must be current through October 2017 in order for your ballot to be processed. All elections are important and have consequences and the CBA Board of Directors election is no exception.
