Temple Terrace has the Sun Dome sports arena and event venue at the University of South Florida, only a few miles from the church. Also nearby is Skipper’s Smokehouse, a popular music venue, frequently called the “Skipperdome.” Since our church is housed in a dome, our series is branded “Concerts in the UU Dome.” We had our first concert in 1996, featuring the late Rachel Bissex. Rachel was a touring singer-songwriter (and a UU ) from Vermont, whom I had met in Miami. Rachel appeared at many UU churches across the country. She taught me “the ropes” — such as how to prepare a press release, where to find helpful information on the Internet, and beneficial music conferences. Of course, I greatly appreciated knowledge and direction.

In the last 18 years, we’ve hosted approximately 150 concerts. The genres of music have been varied (classical – jazz – country – bluegrass – blues — traditional folk – contemporary folk, etc,) but primarily “folkish.” We once featured a folk singer/yodeler (also a UU) in a concert, and he held a yodeling workshop that a local TV station news crew arrived to film, unannounced. What a surprise! . But it was fun seeing ourselves yodeling on the TV news.

The concerts have always been door-supported, so we’ve never operated in the red. And any profit goes to the church. Our concert attendance varies. From disappointing (30 or less) to as many as 100, though that many is rare. We have occasionally networked with a local music organization – Friends of Florida Folk Inc., a 501c3 organization. We hope to do that again in the future.

We have recently held fewer concerts than before. Times have changed, and competition has increased. Many more music venues now present “our” kind of music than in the past, and more seem to be popping up all the time. Other activities at the church have increased over the years, leaving less church available than previously. That’s a good thing. After all, we are a church, so the concerts are catch-as-catch-can and as logistics allow.

Currently, we face a bit of a challenge relating to publicity. Our audience has always consisted of church members plus outsiders. We need both to sustain the series, so getting the word out is very important. Now, with the decline of print media, it’s much more difficult to publicize the concerts. Of course, social media is The Thing these days. During a publicity panel at a music conference I recently attended, a panelist, referring to what’s currently happening with publicity, declared: “It’s the wild, wild West out there.” But we’re getting better at taming the “wild, wild West.” We have a nice concert page on the church website. We can link that page to Facebook evites and on-line listings, and people can easily click such links for details about the concert, which is a good thing. Another good thing is that some audience members are taking (hopefully non-intrusive) photos and posting them on Facebook – which, of course, helps “spread the word.”

The bottom line is that, although we’re doing fewer concerts, we will continue the series for the foreseeable future.

The photo below from a recent bluegrass concert shows Chris Henry
and his band. We had a good turnout for Chris’ concert: 60, plus volunteers and a few guests. Although the nice people shown sitting on the front row all have white hair, the crowd spanned many generations.