The Louisiana Small Business Development Center (LSBDC) and Northshore Regional Endowment for the Arts (NREA) hosted the roundtable discussion “Meet the Music” on Feb. 23 for local artists to meet and learn new ways to promote their bands. Many of the musicians who attended are slated to perform at the 11th annual Strawberry Jam ‘N Toast to the Arts Music Festival on March 16-18.
Dr. Ted Hudspeth, Sr., who initiated Strawberry Jam in 2001, attended “Meet the Music” and spoke from experience about the purpose of the jam and the importance of advertising and promoting the bands.
“The purpose of the Strawberry Jam is to help promote the musicians and artists from this area, and the proceeds from the event go towards all of the schools in the area with music and arts education programs,” said Hudspeth. “We help fund those programs at the schools with the money that we make from the Jam. It’s also a venue where local musicians and artists can be seen and heard by folks from this region.”
Hudspeth owns Dr. Ted’s Musician Center, a disc jockey service in Hammond. His involvement in NREA also stems out to their annual film festival and an arts gala.
Members of the bands “Burlette Blues,” “One Horned Mule” and more attended “Meet the Music” in order to gain insight on marketing and networking.
Three members of the rock band “Stranger Stranger,” who are slated to perform at Strawberry Jam, came to Southeastern from Loranger, La., to learn more about advertising their band.
“It gave me some insight into new avenues in which I can get my name out there and spread it around and even get some new shows and hopefully get out of this little hole that Hammond has,” said D. J. Rohner, the drummer for Stranger Stranger.
Among the panel of experts were Lilli Louis, a folk-jazz artist and songwriter; Allen Lloyd, a local filmmaker, entertainment producer and writer; and Bobby Levie, a local musician and member of the band True Too Life.
“It was a great meeting tonight,” said Levie. “Wayne Ricks put this on. It was excellent. We had a lot of participants. We’re going to take this to the festival in less than a month now. Everyone is invited.”
Levie, the Entertainment Committee Chair for Strawberry Jam, will be taking the stage with two bands, True Too Life and River City Hit Squad. He hopes that many people, especially college students, come out and appreciate the variety of performances that will be offered.
The festival will be taking place at the Louisiana Renaissance Festival grounds. Eighty musical performances will be spread out over seven stages over the three days of the event.
Anyone interested in the Strawberry Jam ‘N Toast Music Festival can find more information at www.strawberryjam.org or on their facebook page at www.facebook.com/nreajamntoast.
In addition, any artists interested in performing at the festival should visit the facebook page, go to the “Band Submissions” tab on the left side of the page and submit their information as soon as possible.