12/5/2008 2:27:00 PM Columbia City Beatwalk bows out for the season
Rogue plays the Columbia City Gallery during Beatwalk. Photo: LARRY MONTGOMERY
Bull Stewart, owner of Columbia City Fitness with his wife Flo, speaks to Joanne Lauterjung Kelly, Columbia City Beatwalk coordinator, about the success he’s seen from hosting Beatwalk events in the gym. Photo: ERIK HANSEN
By ERIK HANSEN
If the weather forecast holds out for this coming Friday, Dec. 5, the final Columbia City Beatwalk of 2008 promises to be an absolute blast for the South End.
"Beatwalk, when we get a good weather month, has been fabulous," said Joanne Lauterjung Kelly, the event's coordinator and primary booster for the past two years.
A Columbia City based communications consultant and graphic artist, Lauterjung Kelly is also an accomplished musician in her own right.
A singer proficient with flute, piano, hand percussion, marimba, and accordion to name a few, she had an opportunity to become a full-time professional musician in 1995. At the time, her musical experiences included a national tour with the Laura Love Band and performances with the Seattle Men's Chorus at New York City's Carnegie Hall and with poet Maya Angelo and famed vocalist Bobby McFerrin, who scored the catchy hit "Don't Worry, Be Happy" from his 1988 album Simple Pleasures. However, she found that sticking within the music industry didn't suit her well.
"The music business is a hard business to be in," said Lauterjung Kelly, who added that she felt she was too sensitive of a person to continue working in the field as she did.
Instead, Lauterjung Kelly now pushes herself to integrate arts in a different way, through facilitation, mediation, and conflict resolution. She thrives on bridge building through the arts.
"It's my personal passion, participatory arts," Lauterjung Kelly asserted.
And this passion is evident in her work with Beatwalk, both with the type of events offered and the quality of the music.
"The caliber of musicians that play, for what I can pay them, is super high," said Lauterjung Kelly, who cited a performance this year by lead electric guitarist extraordinaire Alice Stuart who paved the way for fellow female rockers like Bonnie Raitt. "The musicians kind of do it as a feel-good, community service kind of thing, I think."
As for Columbia City venues, Lauterjung Kelly said Beatwalk started out this year with five, peaked at seven and then dropped to six for the close of the year. The admission price allows entry into all the venues, and a couple of restaurants are choosing, on their own, to do music in conjunction with the Beatwalk events.
"They book themselves and I don't need to put a volunteer at their door," said Lauterjung Kelly, who added that she has tried to concentrate on non-restaurant venues to balance the needs of the event with the needs of the businesses.
With this in mind, she said several of the neighborhood's restaurants have dropped out of participation in Beatwalk this year because they were experiencing problems with large crowds and small food and drink orders.
"They're already busy," Lauterjung Kelly said. "Beatwalk attendees tend to be families who don't order a lot of drinks."
However, she noted the non-restaurant venues, such as Columbia City Fitness, have experienced a good amount of success with Beatwalk. At the gym, Bull and Flo Stewart hand out free passes with a Beatwalk indicator on back. The enterprising couple has seen seven or eight new clients sign up as a result of the Beatwalk offers.
"That's an example of a business that has taken advantage of Beatwalk in their space," Lauterjung Kelly said. "They're offering incentives for people to come back after Beatwalk."
Another example of the healthy business-Beatwalk collaboration comes from Tutta Bella Pizzeria. The restaurant offers dinner for Beatwalk volunteers, an arrangement that has helped keep the numbers of people willing to help out for free at a stable, useful level.
"The volunteers have been fantastic," Lauterjung Kelly noted. "That's been great, to see so many people coming back again and again to help."
And good help is needed. The Beatwalk director's position pays a $200 monthly stipend, which is not much considering Lauterjung Kelly estimates putting in upwards of 40 hours for each Beatwalk booking acts and venues, getting out promotional materials and announcements, and trouble shooting.
"This is definitely a labor of love," she asserted. "This is not a money making thing."
With this in mind, next year Lauterjung Kelly is hoping to find a co-coordinator who is interested in learning about arts management with a mind toward taking over Beatwalk for the 2010 season. She'll put together job description sometime in February.
Another organizational change that will likely affect Beatwalk when it starts up again next spring concerns its duration.
"We're going to rethink the season next year," Lauterjung Kelly said. "Eight months is a hard season. It's hard to maintain the quality. It was tough in fall. June and October were particularly hard with the rain. We're on such a shoestring that one bad month sets us back. It really takes a lot of work to pull this event off. $5 is nothing."
Despite the challenges, Lauterjung Kelly plans to diversify the event's offerings by including more of the hands-on elements she has recently incorporated into Beatwalk. Last month Lauterjung Kelly brought in a couple to teach swing and blues dancing at one of the Beatwalk concerts and made it one of the most popular elements of the event to date.
This month she'll be featuring The Seatles, a Beatles sing-along cover band that will set up shop in the Columbia City Gallery and lead the audience in a chorus of Fab-Four favorites. There was no word on whether or not "I am the Walrus" would be part of the sing-along play list for the night, but whatever the group pulls off with the crowd, Lauterjung Kelly is excited about the participation.
"We've so professionalized the arts that people think they either need to go pro or not do it at all," Lauterjung Kelly said. "And I believe we've given up a lot by relegating our participation to voting on who wins American Idol, or paying a lot of money to go see big name acts. It's a lot more fun and satisfying to play, sing, dance, or create something yourself than to watch it on TV. What percentage of our time is spent consuming, and how much is spent creating? I think finding a balance is a good and necessary thing."
Find out the complete schedule for the last Beatwalk of the 2008 season by visiting www.columbiacitybeatwalk.org. The event is also holding an online t-shirt fundraiser at www.cafepress.com/beatwalk.
Erik Hansen may be reached via editor@southseattlebeacon.com.
