Owensboro Looking For Bluegrassers
07/26/10 MRC/AP
The sponsors of a western Kentucky bluegrass music festival are looking for incentives to prompt musicians to move to Owensboro.
International Bluegrass Music Museum executive director Gabrielle Gray and museum board vice chairman Terry Woodward said they are looking at how Paducah brought artists to town as a possible model.
The goal, Gabrielle Gray and Woodward said, is to create a stable of musicians around the annual River of Music Party. The two got the idea from Lisa Jacobi, a musician from Ducktown, Tennessee, who described Owensboro enthusiastically on a bluegrass music forum online.
The Paducah model, called the Artist Relocation Program, offered artists $2,500 plus incentives for moving to western Kentucky for starting a business. Such a move would tie into a push by local officials to brand Owensboro as a bluegrass city.
City officials have announced plans to move the bluegrass museum into the 60,000-square-foot state office building, creating performance areas both indoors and outdoors.
Gray said something similar to Paducah's arts district might work in Owensboro.
Woodward said Paducah created an arts neighborhood since artist like to be around people who stimulate them, something that Owensboro might emulate with musicians.
The website for Paducah's program says more than 50 artists have relocated to the LowerTown Arts District from Arizona, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Washington, D.C., and Wisconsin in the past decade.
Jacobi said Owensboro could use such a model to become a "musical incubator" for musicians to socialize, experiment and work together.
Jacobi's band, Steel String Session, which is described as "neoclassical-grass," attended the festival in June and began talking about the city, calling it "one of the best riverfront cities we've seen in the world."
Woodward said a music community in Owensboro wouldn't draw nationally known musicians, but that would be in keeping with the idea and the culture.
Gray said Owensboro now needs to work on approaches to the community with the idea of turning downtown into an attraction.
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