Against all odds, Yam Haus saves Boosters Days from tanking again — and Sunday last-band Uncle Chunk will likely carry on the salvation

By all but one account, the Booster Days music tanked as far as attendance on its first night, that being Friday, and it could have been the heat, lack of well-thought-out publicity, or simply that this lack of advertisement meant nobody knew a thing about some of the newer bands that were brought in.
The Booster Days butt may have been saved, however, when Yam Haus — bringing to mind the classic rock group Sweet, as in sweet potatoes — took the stage as the Saturday night headliner and drew a fairly large crowd, although not spectacularly so, and the nearby bars had streaks of business. The difference from the previous night may have been that Yam Haus is known in the immediately surrounding area, if only recently, and Booster Days was riding on the coattails of a gig by that band at Hop & Barrel a couple of nights earlier, where the crowd under the tent was standing room only. Still, on late Saturday night/Sunday morning, there were more empty parking spaces than used ones all around the downtown. And, as any server in the past decade in that downtown bars will tell you, this is the epitome of amateur night where people who go out only a few nights a year overdo it and get trashed/unruly; I was confronted by a series of drunks after walking only a bit over a block away from Lakefront Park where the concerts are held. They quickly got rude when I would not give them the time of day (or night).
But back to the embarrassment on Friday night. You would have to live in a cave not to know that the Booster Days music patrons — and the crazies — move from the band shell to the other downtown venues around 12:30 and party like rock stars until closing, to the point where more than at any other date the bouncers have a challenge getting them pushed out the door in time to avoid a fine. But what’s even more telling than the numbers of patrons in the Lakefront Park pit is that on this night come 1:30 a.m., there were just a moderate number of people at the Smilin’ Moose, where more typically nearly overflowing is the norm, and everywhere south of there was a ghost town, will only a small handful of patrons at each establishment, as shown by having only a couple of people on the dance floors, not much more than that at the bar rails, and not a soul elsewhere in the venues. I gave a bartender friend, at a place that in most past years was shoulder-to-shoulder, a word to the wise and said that come 1 a.m. they would be buried with customers. It never happened.
What is the lesson here? First let me back up a minute. Two years ago I encountered one of the main Booster reps at Dick’s a few weeks after their fest. She was tipsy (that’s a euphemism), and said that the organization — which it should be pointed out does great good for the community by providing youth sports, at the majority of times, when imbibing is not involved — wanted to broaden its base of bands, with new blood beyond the tried and true. Kudos for that, as so many local and area fests are stuck in the mud and have the same old warhorses year after year. She said she wanted my publicity to be a part of their plan on new bands, although there was never even a scant bit of followup with me on that overture. So, this year especially, they brought in a whole bunch of new no-names with no name recognition. Nobody knew them. And nobody cared. Teachable moment: If you are going to bring in these new groups, you have to advertise even more than usual and at least say what style of music they play, and maybe even refer to what’s in their set list and their musical influences, and what separates them from the whole host of cover bands out there. For full disclaimer, this is what my web site — and only my web site — provides to advertising festivals. After a couple of years of success, Booster Days pulled the plug on me, and for the past two years ceased our business relationship, saying in part that they couldn’t scrupulously quantify how many readers I get. I refuted that in a press release, but I don’t think anybody bothered to read it. Recently, my legitimate requests to the Boosters that our arrangement be continued were often met with terse responses, if any at all. Obviously, the results of my lack of coverage show. While I am not saying that this was the lone reason Friday night was essentially a no-show, it illustrates the impact of choices involving how ad money was (mis)spent.
To wit: The Boosters paid a shitload of money to place a full-page ad on the front cover of the Hot Sheet Shopper, which is an extention of the rapidly failing Hudson Star-Observer. The name of the band was given and nothing else. This clearly did not work. I need to say I was a reporter and the chief photographer for the paper for 16 years before being downsizing as part of a significant purging of staff across our division of the company. The pretense was that the photo end of things for this fest was supposed to be divided up amongst the staff, but in truth I usually ended up doing most of it myself. So I know the lay of the land as far as Booster Days. It also needs to be said that people still associate me with the paper, since as a photog I was highly visible, and in the past few years everywhere I go, people complain angrily to me about the quality and thinness of the Star-Observer. They view it as a laughing stock. A sinking ship. I have yet to hear anyone praise it. This even though their coverage of Booster Days, as it would be for them with any community event, was overtly fawning and sheer worship of a local celebration regardless of its merits — the ultimate homer.
I don’t want to trash the fest completely, but this is my point: There are plenty of good things to be said musicwise, including but not limited to the nice facility, if you bother to give even a scant description of what the bands play. But the money on music might be better spent in regional publications that specialize in bands and entertainment, and there are several, and this would give the added advantage of exposure over a much broader region than just western St. Croix County. For fullest visibility, and hundreds and hundreds more words, you’d maybe even consider the front-page advertorial in the Pub and Grub Report.
Despite all that said, I do indeed wish the Boosters well in their last day of their fest today (Sunday). The last band to play the celebration, Uncle Chunk, is a consumate headliner that for a long time was recognized as perhaps the best cover band coming out of the Twin Cities. They are not spectacular and are predictably mainstream, but are solid, and the locals have seen them perform scores of times over many years. They will draw a crowd.
They also are an old warhorse. But maybe also a savior.