Millennium Music Conference gives young bands a chance to be heard
By DAVID N. DUNKLE, The Patriot-News
February 18, 2010, 3:00PM
Shaman's Harvest, a rock band out of Missouri, will perform Saturday night at the Radisson Penn Harris Convention Center in Camp Hill as part of the 14th annual Millennium Music Conference.Indie pop band Farewell Flight is based in Harrisburg, but rarely plays here. There just aren’t many venues in the city anymore for bands that perform original music. “We are not a weekend warrior band,” said drummer Marc Prokopchak, who handles booking arrangements for the band, which plays about 150 dates a year, mostly in other states. “We are 100 percent commited to being a full-time band.”
Farewell Flight does have a Harrisburg gig Friday night. The four-man group, led by singer/songwriter Luke Foley, will do a 40-minute set at the Radisson Penn Harris Convention Center in Camp Hill as part of the 14th annual Millennium Music Conference.
They will be among some 270 bands from all over the country who will perform, one after another, at 26 venues in the Harrisburg area tonight and Saturday. The musicians, from the worlds of rock, acoustic, blues, jazz and hip-hop, come to be heard, sell a few CDs and T-shirts, and network with music industry professionals who might be able to help them get noticed.
Even bands on the rise like Shaman’s Harvest still need gigs like this. That’s why the members of the hard rock band, whose “Dragonfly” single is climbing the rock charts, will drive here from their home base in Jefferson City, Mo. They hope to follow a path laid down by bands like Godsmack, which attended Millennium a few years ago and has since gone on to rock stardrom.
“Kids know about us from seeing us on Youtube or Facebook, but we have not done a lot of playing in the East,” said Phil Dunscombe, who manages Shaman's Harvest. “We definitely have a story going on here. We just want to get out there and play the market.”
John Harris, director of the Millennium Conference, said it’s harder than ever to make it in the music business. A yearlong national recession also hasn’t helped, but Harris said talent and tenacity are still the keys. “Yes the economy is bad, but if a band is good, the economy is not a problem,” he said. “There are more bands than you can shake a stick at, but the ones that are motivated and able to play half decent are the ones that are going to get booked and make a living.”
Ron Kamionka, who owns several nightclubs and restaurants in downtown Harrisburg, including the Hardware Bar, Sambuca’s and the Tom Sawyer diner, generally doesn’t book original acts, preferring to draw from a short list of cover bands and DJ’s for the places where he provides live music. Gigs may pay less than $100 a night. “People’s loyalty to live music is just not there,” Kamionka said. “People are more averse to paying a cover charge. I think it has to do with the trend toward bar touring. They’d rather go to five or six bars a night and have more to spend on drinking.”
That’s why bands like Farewell Flight go to Texas for gigs, and bands like Shaman’s Harvest drive cross-country for a chance to play. “We always laugh about the recession,” said Prokopchak, who works part-time as a paralegal when not touring. “If you are super poor to begin with, it hasn’t really affected you a lot.”
Why keep going?
“I don’t know what else we would do,” he said. “At the end of the day, doing what you want six months of the year and coming back for a job the other six months is better than working at a job you don’t like 12 months of the year.”
http://blog.pennlive.com/go/2010/02/..._gives_yo.html
i think this is pretty cool...270 bands in the area at the same time, very nice!