Thursday, May 9, 2024

Howdy everyone!

Today's topic: Gathering performers, and our 2025 Performers Fund. What do we try to achieve with our performers?

• We strive for every session and show to bring out the best in each performer, and to create synchronicity between their diverse talents.
• We try to include both established and rising performers from Texas and beyond. In both 2023 and 2024, our performers came from 12 states, and in 2024, two came from Canada.
• We use professional sound techs to maximize sound quality, and professional photographers so we can share moments with you.
• We aim to pay our performers fairly.
• We look to produce top-quality shows with major impact. In 2023, audiences applauded Charlie Goodnight: His Life in Poetry and Song, by Andy Wilkinson, a true western opera comprised of 15 poems and 14 songs, involving more than 20 performers. In 2024, attendees were thrilled with Roll On, Cowboys, the live version of Andy Hedges' double album of duets with notable performers, which brought Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Corb Lund, and Dom Flemons to Alpine, along with favorites like Waddie Mitchell, Pipp Gillette, Brenn Hill, and Brigid Reedy. 2024 also included six other paid shows and more than 30 free sessions.

All of this takes money -- quite a lot of it.

Right now, we are building our 2025 Performers Fund, and we need to ask for your help.

1) Are you someone who wants to help inspire others to give? Then please join our pledge pool of matching funds. Your contribution will be used to double-match the donations of others. Any pledge amount is welcome, and payments can be made by card or check. Pledge payments are due September 1, 2024, and cards on file will be billed on that date.

2) Do you want to give and have your contribution tripled? Our goal is $90,000, and everything helps. You can donate right now, and watch the bar graph move. We already have enough pledges committed to double-match donations up to $10,535.

Cowboy poetry and music gets under your skin. It's raw, real, sometimes silly, often tender, and tightly connected to history, domesticated and wild animals, and the land. Please help us continue bringing poetry and music to Alpine each February.

All the best,
Kay and Gene Nowell
Co-Chairs
Lone Star Cowboy Poetry Gathering

P.S. To donate now and have your donation double-matched, click here. Thank you!

P.P.S. To inspire others to give, join our pledge pool of matching funds. Payments are due September 1, 2024, and cards on file will be billed on that date. Thank you!

All photos above are by Jessica Brandi Lifland.

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