February and March were busy months for the California Bluegrass Association and April will be come in like a lion as well. Many of our CBA Area Activities VP’s and Board Members and volunteers are busy making certain we can present activities year round for Californians. Watch the Breakdown and the website for announcements and/or get on the mailing lists of the individual VPs.
Lucy Smith (Butte and Tehama Counties) has added a Concert Series to her jam events and presented Bill Evans and Nu Blu in the last couple of months and has scheduled Kathy Barwick and Pete Siegfried April 19th and Rock Ridge Bluegrass Band for May 17th. Vicki Frankel ( San Mateo County ) has started a new Tuesday night jam in Pacifica. Marcos Alvira (Merced, Mariposa and Stanislaus) is busy with events in his area and has started a newsletter. David Brace (Board Member) just presented Nu Blu in a house concert which was also broadcast over the web as part of Concert Windows online Bluegrass Festival. Tim Edes (Board Chairman) produced another sold out Night at the Grange featuring Adkins & Loudermilk (also performing on the main stage at our Father’s Day Festival this year). New Area VP Tony Pritchett (Riverside/San Bernadino) produced a concert with Adkins & Loudermilk in San Bernadino. Mark Hogan (Board member and North County VP) just completed the 15th Annual Sonoma County Bluegrass and Folk Festival and is helping produce the Cloverdale Fiddle Festival on April 11th. David Brace and Marcos Alvira are busily organizing the Spring Campout in Turlock coming up this month. Steve Goldfield (Board Member) has organized another stellar Old Time Gathering for the Father’s Day Festival and is planning another Old Time Campout this summer. Maria Nadauld (Board Member) attended Leadership Bluegrass in Nashville (IBMA) this month and is also a member of the IBMA By-Laws Committee. Frank Solivan ran the CBA Jam Room at Wintergrass in Washington.
We are excited to announce two big things in the works for the CBA this month. Rick Cornish (Webmaster, Lifetime Member, Chairman Emeritus) has facilitated the reconstruction and re-design of the website. Our website was built by Rick and others 15 years ago and is obsolete now. The website has the public cbaontheweb page everyone can access and also has an Administrative and e-Commerce site which holds many of our records and data bases and links to our credit card and PayPal accounts and to our QuickBooks accounting system. It is a huge and complicated site and desperately needed an expensive rebuild. Rick researched and recruited programmers and designers who were then approved by and contracted with and the rebuild journey is in progress. There is a June 1 roll out date planned at this point.
We are also converting to a sales program called Tix.com to handle our e-Commerce ticket sales. Member Gary Mansperger researched and helped with the bar-coding system we put in place for sales and inventory at the festival for the last few years and continues to spear head this project . It took an actual rocket scientist to facilitate this work. For several years Alicia Meiners (e-Commerce) and John Erwin (mail purchases) have spent thousands of hours volunteering to manage our purchases (Alicia for everything purchased on line and John for the Father’s Day Festival mail orders) and, in the future, sales for many of our events will be handled by Tix.com. The debt we owe Gary, Alicia and John is enormous. Alicia has handled all online payments for membership, festivals, music academies and camps and much of her burden will be lifted when the new system goes live this month. We have many unsung heroes in our CBA stable and these three have made an enormous contribution.
Ted Kuster (San Francisco VP and Director of the JD Bluegrass Cookbook Project) tells us that work on the Cookbook is on schedule and going smoothly. Susan Elston has completed much of the editing for the book and the accompanying CD is on track. The Cookbook will be available for sale by the Father’s Day Festival.
There are other volunteers not mentioned in this column who faithfully contribute to the CBA throughout the year and should be acknowledged daily by all of us. I have only mentioned some of the newest or current activities performed by our valuable volunteer members and hope I have not forgotten anyone or anything. It is amazing what we have accomplished in the last 40 years and you can show your support for the organization and these volunteers by making certain your membership is current and that you consider volunteering. I received an email today from a member who has a great idea for something the CBA can do in the future and is willing to take on the project (details later) and I welcome you to also step forward and contribute. A major contribution is a current membership and your attendance at one or many of our events. Remember, this Association is for YOU.
