When it comes to the blues festival, we blew it in Lakewood Ranch

What would you do if you opened a restaurant, say Cajun food, and everyone who came through your doors said it was excellent, but only 10 people a day came through the doors?

You would close.

Such is the case with the Lakewood Ranch Blues Festival, which made two failed efforts to engage with the music fans of East County on the first Saturday of the last two Decembers at Waterside Park.

Only about 750 people bought tickets to the concerts, which featured nationally-known artists, seven bands at a time. The blues concert was excellent, but nobody cared.

Event promoter Paul Benjamin said Monday he received an email from Schroeder-Manatee Ranch saying it was moving on from the festival. Benjamin was somewhat shocked, because he had already booked seven bands for the third event. He said he almost missed finding the email at all.

"I was under the assumption that we were going to do it," he said. "It normally takes three years to establish. I thought I would have a longterm run. And the third year, I thought we would gain another 500 to 1,000 people."

But two years of indifference from local residents was enough for Morgan Bettes Angell, whose Independent Jones produced the festival with Benjamin Productions, to call it quits.

"The main thing was that we actually sold less tickets the first year than the second," Bettes Angell said. "We didn't see the ticket sales growing when we had a perfect everything. It should have led to more people."

She was referring to the talent, and to perfect weather, which meant a perfect setting in December along Kingfisher Lake.

Bank of America, which provided about half of the sponsor's funds collected both years, notified Bettes Angell at the second concert that it would be spending its marketing dollars elsewhere the next year.

When Bettes Angell decided to walk away, so did SMR.

If you were a fan, you now have a reason to sing the blues.

Benjamin will come out OK, as he is taking the festival to G.T. Bray Park in Bradenton on Dec. 5, which would have been the day Lakewood Ranch would have hosted. Before he promoted the concert in Lakewood Ranch, Benjamin produced the Bradenton Blues Festival for 12 years.

He said Bray will work because the park has a lot of shade, but he admits the Waterside Park location was stunning.

"It is beautiful in Lakewood Ranch," he said. "The Waterside site was beautiful."

He said he enjoyed the partnership with SMR and noted that "it certainly is their prerogative" to cancel. He said the fact he lives in Maine and is a snowbird who owns on Treasure Island might have worked against him in Lakewood Ranch because SMR might have wanted local "feet on the ground."

Bettes Angell is a local who regularly books talent for SMR.

The festival's failure certainly is a concern to me as someone who loves live music. Sure, we have lots of small venues in the region and lots of talented local musicians, but there is something special about having elite bands and musicians perform in your backyard.

Every opportunity to attract that kind of concert has crashed and burned in the past 10 years. Remember Blue Oyster Cult performing at the Premier Sports Campus in January 2017? Thousands of music fans came that day despite temperatures in the low 50s with rain. It seemed the concert possibilities for Lakewood Ranch were off and running.

Obviously, the market exists.

But shortly afterward, the Thunder by the Bay organizers said they were going back to Sarasota. It was one and done.

Late in 2017, when Manatee County was buying the Premier Sports Campus, there was talk by the county that it would build an amphitheater on the site. That was wonderful news because it would be the only venue in the area that could host a concert of say, 5,000 people.

But that was just talk.

There was hope that an indoor events center could be built at Premier, but that seems like false hope. There is a current plan to build an ice arena at Premier, but whether that building will be able to efficiently convert into a concert venue is to be questioned.

The Lakewood Ranch Blues Festival was real, an encouraging step to open up the possibility of landing other big name entertainers.

But the local residents obviously didn't like the genre, or have so much free entertainment that the $75 festival tickets seemed to be a gouge, or thought seven bands was just too much, or just weren't familiar with the names Benjamin provided, or, well, whatever.

Perhaps your plan was to wait until the third year of the festival to see how the first two years would go.

I just see it all as a lost opportunity, and it could be several years before we get another.

 What did we learn from all this? Well, we know that Waterside Place is a better concert venue than we could have imagined. Four thousand to 5,000 could be handled easily if Bettes Angell, or another promoter, decides to go after another band in the future. Perhaps someone just under the radar. For example, I see Dave Mathews is playing the Florida State Fairgrounds in May. Gladys Knight is playing the Hard Rock in Tampa in April. Vince Gill is playing Clearwater in June.

Pie in the sky? Who knows?

Whether Bettes Angell is willing to put herself on the line again in Lakewood Ranch remains to be seen. But she always is considering possibilities, even after the Lakewood Ranch Blues Festival crashed and burned due to a lack of local support.

"It's back to the drawing board," she said.

One thing is for sure. If you don't support the attempts to bring in top quality entertainment, it won't be around long.