Sarah Milligan 00:02
Okay, good. Okay, that's a little high. So, this is Sarah Milligan and I'm
interviewing Kim Lady Smith and Bob Gates. We are going to be talking about the Kentucky Folklife Festival, starting with the early years and kind of just having some discussions about how that was planned and worked. Today's date is January 18th, January 18th, 2012. And Amanda Hardiman, who is an employee with the Kentucky Folklife program is going to sit in with this. All right. So--okay, so here's where Bob and I were earlier, we talked a lot about--we talked a lot about how the Folklife program went from Berea, as an independent--and then when the [Kentucky] Oral History Commission came to the state side--or came with the [Kentucky] Historical Society in 1992. It was 1992, right? That the Folklife program came with it and was still had that cross-agency with the [Kentucky] Arts Council, supporting the Folklife program through grants, and some programming support and the Historical Society as the main supporter with staff, and office space and some programming. And where we got stuck, and why we call Kim in is because we were trying to remember how--all the details for the first Folklife Festival started, and it was such a complex event that it was, we thought it would be easier to actually talk with both of you [laughs] to get greater details for the complexity of it and all the different parts. Because I know Bob has a lot with the logistics and the programming, and Kim, I know you did a lot with the administrative side and all that too, so we were just trying to get an accurate picture.Bob Gates 02:01
When--I first was interviewed at Berea, and I told them I didn't want to do a
festival. Were you part of the--okay.Kim Lady Smith 02:10
I don't remember that.
Bob Gates 02:11
Because I had done a state folk festival for Louisiana for three years.
Sarah Milligan 02:15
Right.
Bob Gates 02:16
And---I--they kind of--when they first were interviewing me, they sa--at the end
of the interview, they said, "are you going to do a folk festival?" And I said, "no, I don't think so." [laughs]Kim Lady Smith 02:26
Why didn't you want to?
Bob Gates 02:28
It just seemed like I was new to the state. I didn't know anything--know what we
could present, and I thought we needed to do research first. And Berea, you know, I knew Appalshop had done some things in western Kentucky, but it was like--it was a whole new area, and I didn't--I didn't know where to start with the festival, and I was tired of festivals. [laughter]Sarah Milligan 02:46
Well, I think you told me earlier that they had done sort of a small version of
a festival before you came, is that right?Bob Gates 02:54
Well, Dick Van Kleeck had--who was called--he was--he got money from the NEA
[National Endowment for the Arts] to be the state--folklorist and was working out of the Center for the Arts, and I think it was '64 and '65.Kim Lady Smith 03:09
No.
Bob Gates 03:10
Wasn't it--no no, not '60, I'm sorry.
Sarah Milligan 03:13
'80? [laughter]
Bob Gates 03:15
'85 and '86, that they did research on this and--and they did a festival outside
of the center in the back.Sarah Milligan 03:26
In Danville, is that what you're? Oh, the Center for the Arts in Louisville.
Bob Gates 03:30
Yeah, in Louisville and back, what do they call it the--what do they call that area?
Kim Lady Smith 03:35
The Belvedere.
Bob Gates 03:35
The Belvedere, and Greg Hanson had been hired out of Western Kentucky University
to work on that project. So, he had done a lot of the research with another folklorist, and they did research from Covington on down. So, it was basically a river fest, it was about river traditions.Sarah Milligan 03:54
So, they really had just done research on the Kentucky River is that what?
Bob Gates 03:57
No, it was the Ohio River.
Sarah Milligan 03:58
Oh, the Ohio River?
Bob Gates 03:59
They had the--.
Sarah Milligan 03:59
I see.
Bob Gates 03:59
The Ommpah band from from Cincinnati, basically that area. They had the guy who
carved the (??) fest's eagle. They had--Raymond Hicks was one of them, and some other people. So, they staged that two years in a row, I think, I think it's '85 and '86. And then he got kind of carried away into the Center for the Arts, and actually, when I came here, he was on our advisory group. And he's, and I asked him about presenting people like Eddie Pennington, who I'd heard about, and he said, "we only present really well, really good artists on our stage." He said something to that effect that he wasn't looking to do Kentucky traditional artists on his stage. This really surprised me.Sarah Milligan 04:50
He had moved on, maybe.
Bob Gates 04:52
Well, and what they were doing is kind of what would you call it--.
Kim Lady Smith 04:54
Did he do the Lonesome Pine?
Bob Gates 04:56
The Lonesome Pine series yeah, which I always considered kind of yuppy, world
music. I don't know [laughs].Sarah Milligan 05:04
Bob wasn't afraid to share his opinion either.
Bob Gates 05:06
Well, I mean, it wasn't Kentucky, and they had never had anybody from Kentucky.
They had people on that's--I remember going--going once and they had these [this] acapella group saying Led Zeppelin. You know [makes musical sounds] [laughter]Sarah Milligan 05:19
Okay, okay. So, when you--there had been some precedent here and they were kind
of working towards it, and when they interviewed you, that was a pointed question that they asked you. Obviously, they were thinking of it, so.Bob Gates 05:29
Yeah, I don't know if Betsy Adler was, I think it might have been, but I don't
remember who it--. You know, it was a consortium of people who were hiring for that program. Wasn't the Historic Society involved in that?Kim Lady Smith 05:39
The oral history commission was.
Bob Gates 05:41
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 05:41
The society wasn't really involved with the festival. It was really through the
oral history commission that we moved folklife. Now, Jim Klotter, he supported it, but--.Sarah Milligan 05:52
Right.
Kim Lady Smith 05:54
--Where ultimately to put the Folklife program, you know, wasn't an issue in the
beginning. It wasn't until we got into '90-91 that--.Bob Gates 06:03
But you were--.
Kim Lady Smith 06:04
Its permanent home,
Bob Gates 06:04
The oral history commission was--.
Kim Lady Smith 06:06
I was on the advisory board.
Bob Gates 06:07
Was on the advisor board—who--who wrote--who what--worked with Betsy Adler to
write the grant.Sarah Milligan 06:12
So, help me fill in a couple of gaps, then Kim about that, because when we
talked about the advisory board for the folklife program before it came to KHS, do you remember who that comprised and kind of what that structure was?Kim Lady Smith 06:24
No, not exactly--and part of it is that was when my daughter was born, so I was
in and out of--.Sarah Milligan 06:30
You're excused [laughs].
Kim Lady Smith 06:32
But it was funny, the [Kentucky] Humanities Council and Betsy Adler that
spearheaded it, and then the Arts Council became very involved. Now, the Arts Council has gone through a lot of changes in the state government at that time as well, which I think had some impact. You remember, the woman who's--the ceiling fell down on her. She was commissioner of arts, who came to see--Thurman is that her name?Bob Gates 06:58
Louella (??) Thurman or something like that?
Kim Lady Smith 06:59
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 07:00
The ceiling came down on her.
Kim Lady Smith 07:01
[Chuckles] She went over to visit Bob in Berea, for something reason. She was
the commissioner of the arts department. At that time, there was an arts department that had heritage and the Arts Council was the government--.Sarah Milligan 07:12
Cabinet sort of thing, right?
Kim Lady Smith 07:13
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 07:14
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 07:14
And so, she was head of that, she came to see Bob and somehow, the ceiling fell
down on her and--.Bob Gates 07:20
There was this big, weird-shaped office because it had been the Berea newspaper
office, at one time. But it was owned by the college, and they gave it to me as my office. So, I had this--and me and my student worker, and--what was it-- Teresa Hollingsworth was there, I think at the time, she was working with me. We had, we had this whole big area, and then over by the--they had a bathroom in there too. Because I was looking at a video the other day and Teresa was showing--giving me a tour of the bathroom, and the things [laughter] "we have our own bathroom." Right next to the bathroom [chuckles] was a water fountain. And above the water fountain, the ceiling came loose, right when she was there. And she had---had had water right before that. So, and people didn't like her very much.Kim Lady Smith 08:08
Yeah, it made the rounds. It was it was a (??)
Bob Gates 08:11
I was almost a folk hero. [laughter]
Kim Lady Smith 08:14
Yeah, there was always politics that you had to deal with. So, in the beginning,
it was pretty much at Berea, but there was always the idea that---we needed to have a permanent home. And so, I was involved in those discussions, but it wasn't until Marty Newell [be]came head of the Arts Council that I got more involved. And by then Bob and I had been working on the Ohio River project. He was--the oral history commission was giving $1,000 a year, which for us was a lot, in support of the program itself, plus giving grants. Bob is on our advisory board, so we were developing a really strong working relationship. And that--then in '92, there was a much larger reorganization being discussed, and you can go to Jim Klotter interview and find out about that.Sarah Milligan 09:01
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 09:02
So, it was an opportunity that as they will be organizing the oral history
commission, at the time, also possibly the Heritage Council, that we could get the Folklife program in through that large reorganization. So basically, when the oral history commission--[it] was decided the commission will come into the society, the advisory group, but quite frankly, it was a lot [of] Marty and I sitting down and Bob, discussing where's--the best thing to do, came to the oral history commission, not through any kind of written agreement.Sarah Milligan 09:38
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 09:38
But that was it, and the society agreed, as did the cabinet, but the Folklife
program would come in with a commission into the society.Sarah Milligan 09:48
So, was it under the commission at that point?
Kim Lady Smith 09:50
Not exactly, but it was attached, it was put in our division. So, when I was the
division director, but Bob was the head anymore of the Folklife program. So, you know, in the bureaucracy--.Sarah Milligan 10:05
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 10:05
--You know, I'm the division manager and took on other responsibilities, highway
markers, Juniors [Kentucky Junior Historical Society]. It was the Outreach Division.Sarah Milligan 10:11
Right, it was oral history, education, outreach was the title, at the time.
Kim Lady Smith 10:14
Was the title.
Bob Gates 10:15
Was that the first title?
Kim Lady Smith 10:16
That was, officially, it still is---and it was listed as a branch but we--in the
executive order, but it turned out to be a division.Sarah Milligan 10:24
Yeah, it has a KRS [Kentucky Revised Statute], doesn't it? I mean it's--.
Kim Lady Smith 10:26
Yeah. And then, we struggled through to get Bob on secure funding, to get his
position state-funded and off Arts Council money. To get finally, was in--through the history center budget, we were able to get the funds for the folklife specialist or assistant, whatever. Lois Joy (??) was the first one--.Bob Gates 10:50
When I first came here--.
Kim Lady Smith 10:51
--To be a staff--we increased his budget, got him grant money for--to come out
of the society's budget. And we got $25,000 a year at that point dedicated to the festival. So, you got a pretty good, you got a staff position, an increased operating budget, and money for the festival at '90, '99.Sarah Milligan 11:13
'99?
Kim Lady Smith 11:13
'99 or 2000. Whenever that budget came in. So, that was after the festival had
been going for a while then. So, what--so.Bob Gates 11:21
--When I came here, though, from Berea--.
Kim Lady Smith 11:23
In '92.
Bob Gates 11:24
--That was---that was Historical Society money that was paying for my salary,
wasn't it?Kim Lady Smith 11:28
I can't remember.
Bob Gates 11:29
Because I wrote three--four NEA grants to keep my position going, or three,
because there was already one written when I went there. And the idea was, you can only go to them three times. So, I wrote a fourth one that was a transition grant, that would get me into the Historical Society, or get me to someplace.Kim Lady Smith 11:48
I think this is where state government rules get confused. Bob, in the Arts
Council found the money initially, that got him in, but the way the state budget worked at that time was, he would--when you did your budget, you turned in your personnel allocation. And they gave you that in a general fund. So, Bob, automatically, the--got general fund dollars.Sarah Milligan 12:13
Okay.
Kim Lady Smith 12:13
Because it was put in the budget. This was before there were budget cuts.
Sarah Milligan 12:18
It was a general fund request, oh.
Kim Lady Smith 12:20
It was--you know, part---the state would give you the budget for your personnel
and they looked at your personnel allocation, and they weren't looking at where the money came from. They just said, "okay, you've got this." Bob was put in. Now, it didn't work for Lois Joy. It did--my recollection is that it's how we got Bob's salary into the system.Sarah Milligan 12:40
So, when--.
Bob Gates 12:41
--And I kept--
Sarah Milligan 12:41
--Soft money with the Arts Council--.
Bob Gates 12:42
--I kept writing NEA grants every year for a second position.
Kim Lady Smith 12:46
Right.
Bob Gates 12:46
And, and sometimes, eventually, they started coming through the Arts Council to
here and--.Kim Lady Smith 12:52
Yep, the Arts Council would apply for the grants, and then in our count. It was
convoluted, it was always convoluted. But it wasn't until the history center operating budget came in. That was over $500,000 increase in operating, that the Outreach Division got a piece of that, and the folklife program got on really solid footing at that point.Sarah Milligan 13:17
I see. So, it wasn't till after you'd been here eight or nine years within the
Historical Society framework, that you actually had a good outreach budget. Good programming budget. Okay.Bob Gates 13:29
You asked earlier about the advisory committee that I had at Berea and Judy
Jennings was on that. Somebody from--.Sarah Milligan 13:39
Was she--.
Bob Gates 13:40
She's, she's with the foundation--.
Sarah Milligan 13:42
Who was she with then?
Kim Lady Smith 13:43
Yeah. Then, what was Judy then--?
Bob Gates 13:46
She still with Appalshop or?
Kim Lady Smith 13:48
Yeah, she was with Appalshop at that point.
Sarah Milligan 13:50
Okay.
Bob Gates 13:52
So, I found a list of them the other day, with a letter--a couple letters--so
I--it's in the files.Sarah Milligan 13:58
Good.
Bob Gates 13:58
Actually.
Sarah Milligan 14:00
Okay, that's good to know. Okay, so let me--let me see if I understand this,
too. When you came in at '92, there was all the discussion about--the Arts Council was still paying some of your budget, there was a lot of soft money. What time did you get your first folklife specialist? Y'all remember that?Kim Lady Smith 14:18
Pretty early, you got a grant to do it.
Bob Gates 14:23
That's--that was Beth.
Sarah Milligan 14:24
Beth who?
Kim Lady Smith 14:25
Beth Buttle (??).
Bob Gates 14:26
Beth Buttle?
Sarah Milligan 14:27
Buttle?
Kim Lady Smith 14:28
Yes.
Bob Gates 14:29
Beth Buttle, yeah.
Sarah Milligan 14:30
Buttle.
Kim Lady Smith 14:30
She was a folklore student from Western [Kentucky University].
Sarah Milligan 14:32
Okay.
Kim Lady Smith 14:32
And I think she was here a couple of years, before she got married and left. I
don't remember the exact dates. I think Bob, it was probably after a year or two, after he'd been here.Sarah Milligan 14:45
Okay.
Bob Gates 14:46
And--you know, I had had Teresa Hollingsworth when I was in Berea.
Sarah Milligan 14:49
For a year or two.
Bob Gates 14:50
Yeah, and then she went on to--to Maine, where they didn't have iced tea, it
drove her crazy.Sarah Milligan 14:59
No wonder she moved back down South.
Kim Lady Smith 15:04
And that was again, you know a grant that I believe Bob wrote. I mean, this
first few years, it was established in the program and establishing the connections to make it secure. The McCreary County project was done. Partially because the Cabinet had a strong interest in in the McCreary County, which got one of the first iced tea, large, iced tea grants.Sarah Milligan 15:29
Oh, okay.
Kim Lady Smith 15:30
And so, you know, it was a kind of a joint effort.
Sarah Milligan 15:34
Right.
Kim Lady Smith 15:34
So, we spent a lot of time just making sure people appreciated the validity of
the program, and it's what we do.Sarah Milligan 15:43
Yeah. So, it seems like that was a common theme, from what Bob was saying, when
he started at Berea, he spent the first few years really just going out and establishing connections and building---building fieldwork.Kim Lady Smith 15:54
Wait a minute, I remember now, I'm sorry.
Sarah Milligan 15:56
Go for it.
Kim Lady Smith 15:57
I remember how we got you in the budget. Sherry Jelsma was secretary of the
cabinet at that point, and we were putting the budget request together and Lou DeLuca and I went, who was head of the Arts Council. To talk to Sherry Jelsma about the importance of this. And of course, Secretary Jelsma had been very interested in McCreary County and all that stuff. And we didn't meet with her, we met with her assistant, but they agreed that it would go in the governor's budget that Bob's salary basically would go in the governor's budget. And that's how we got Bob in.Sarah Milligan 16:36
So, it was---it was like a higher level petition, pointedly just to--.
Kim Lady Smith 16:42
Right, when you turn in your budget request--.
Sarah Milligan 16:44
Right.
Kim Lady Smith 16:44
You know, it was one of the things on the list, but since this was interagency,
you had the Arts Council very--.Sarah Milligan 16:50
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 16:50
--Interested and Lou wanted it off of his budget.
Sarah Milligan 16:54
Right.
Kim Lady Smith 16:54
And I remember that meeting, and it got put in the budget that way. It wasn't just--.
Bob Gates 17:02
When about was it--or when that was?
Kim Lady Smith 17:04
That would have--Jelsma was here in '92. So, it would have been probably the '94 budget.
Bob Gates 17:13
Oh.
Kim Lady Smith 17:14
'93 or '94, I'm not sure how the biennium worked.
Bob Gates 17:16
And Lou was director so--.
Kim Lady Smith 17:18
Lou was director of the Arts Council.
Bob Gates 17:20
Marty was before that.
Kim Lady Smith 17:21
Marty had left.
Bob Gates 17:22
Marty and then Lou. Okay.
Sarah Milligan 17:24
Okay, that makes sense.
Bob Gates 17:26
And we, you know, with the Arts Council, we always [clears throat] work with
them to have a grant--folk arts grant program, though, we kind of modeled that after the Folklife National Endowment for the Arts. They had a folk arts panel, so, we, we talked them into having a panel that was folklorist, and maybe, you know, maybe a--community member or something like that. But that was kind of our connection with them was--always work, doing those kinds of things, but also responding to the trends that came down the pipeline to the Arts Council [clears throat]. Because there was one [clears throat] big trend about cultural planning [clears throat]. Remember that? cultural planning, so we'd talked, and we said, "okay, if you're going to do cultural planning with these agencies, you also ought to look at the culture that's there--."Kim Lady Smith 18:13
I see.
Bob Gates 18:13
--And do surveys. So, we started working on--a lot of our surveys came that way,
early on.Sarah Milligan 18:19
Oh, I see. That makes sense.
Bob Gates 18:19
And they always--.
Sarah Milligan 18:20
And those were the--.
Bob Gates 18:20
--Put in folklorists from Western.
Sarah Milligan 18:22
And those were mainly through the Arts Council, the state Arts Council.
Bob Gates 18:24
Well, the ideas came. Yeah, it was through the Arts Council. And so, the Arts
Council would say, "well, this is great. Let's give out grants to communities who want to do cultural planning." And so, when they did that, they--oftentimes, they included me giving a little talk about why folklife was important. And then we--we'd run a second, like a secondary level project under--within that that was, so not all the grant--all the projects were.Sarah Milligan 18:47
Yeah.
Bob Gates 18:48
---Were had folklorists involved, but some of them like Owen County and I'm
thinking, up there. A Greenup County, I think--.Kim Lady Smith 19:00
Okay.
Bob Gates 19:01
There's four or five up there--.
Sarah Milligan 19:02
Right.
Bob Gates 19:03
That came out of that.
Sarah Milligan 19:05
Okay, so that makes more sense. So let me ask you a question Kim, real[ly]
quick, because Bob, and I talked about this in an earlier interview too, and you might have a little bit of a different perspective in it, as well. But when the discussion was being made on where to bring the Folklife program, because I know, Bob mentioned he had talked to Western Kentucky at the time--. You know, he had visited a lot of different places, talked to the [Kentucky] Heritage Council, and was doing--investigating. So, do you remember the--the real thought process between--behind bringing it into the Historical Society versus any of those other places? Because it sounds like you were negotiating maybe a little bit for both.Kim Lady Smith 19:45
There was concern that the Heritage Council had its own agenda. And Kurt moves
the program in directions--that wasn't what the Arts Council was interested in, or the oral history commission or Bob. They were looking at that cultural preservation program. They were kind of moving it. So that was an option that we weren't entirely comfortable with.Sarah Milligan 20:14
Okay.
Bob Gates 20:14
Trying to talk David into understanding the idea of culture--what's it--.
Kim Lady Smith 20:20
It was cultural preservation, I think. Wasn't that what it was called?
Bob Gates 20:23
Yeah, instead of--preservation, cultural conservation.
Kim Lady Smith 20:26
Yeah, that's it.
Bob Gates 20:27
There had been some meetings in Washington and some of the folklorists have gone there.
Sarah Milligan 20:30
That's true, that was an upcoming hot thing--Yeah--
Bob Gates 20:32
Yeah, I didn't, I didn't get to go to the meetings. But I was, I think Michael
Ann was involved in some of that and--.Kim Lady Smith 20:40
Yeah, we had meetings about it.
Bob Gates 20:42
And I tried to talk him into the idea of intangible resources. That the tangible
resources are buildings, but the intangible ones are not, and he just couldn't get his head around. Well, he sort of did, but I never felt real comfortable with that either.Kim Lady Smith 20:56
So, like I said, the Historical Society appreciated folklife in--by Jim Klotter.
Sarah Milligan 21:07
Who was the director.
Kim Lady Smith 21:08
Of the Historical Society, yeah. He understood that, that it would bring history
to a level of understanding of the common person. Instead of just doing white man's history, old white man's history, the Historical Society was interested in diversity and interested in the importance of everyday life. And the oral history commission by then, Bob and I were working very closely together on a lot of projects, and we had done the Ohio River project with Mary Winter. So that illustrated the importance of, of how we could work together. For whatever reason, I don't really know, you'd have to ask Marty, the Arts Council did not want to bring it into the Arts Council.Bob Gates 21:55
They've always said they didn't have the ceiling for a position there.
Kim Lady Smith 22:00
There were a lot of I think, political reasons that they felt they could support
it better if it was in another entity. And the Historical Society at that point was moving forward with plans for the history center. It was considered an agency with potential challenges, but potential and--and I think we were on the same wavelength. We kind of knew where we wanted the folklife program to go, so for Bob and I to work together, and Marty, made sense.Bob Gates 22:32
I mean, it was--it was kind of scary, trying to figure out where to go with it.
And then I remember, were you helping me when I went to Western and talked to them?Kim Lady Smith 22:39
I don't think I was involved in that.
Bob Gates 22:41
Okay. Because I found some letters and when--the other day, and one was to Cam
Collins, who had gotten me in to the see the provost or somebody, and, and I went to the meeting, and my salary had been kind of lowered. And the idea of a state advisory group, which had been really helpful to me in Louisiana, and we still had at that time--. I guess we dropped it when we moved to the historic society. But in Louisiana, if---if there was [were] problems with the folklife program, this advisory committee, which is made up of some governor, kind of like the oral history. They actually brought the program back a couple times in Louisiana. So, I thought it was important, but Western didn't want that. They wanted it to be kind of under the control of the professors. And so, I felt uncomfortable with that. And, and I think--I remember--one of the letters in there is from [sighs] Adler--.Kim Lady Smith 23:46
Oh, Bet--.
Bob Gates 23:46
--Betsy Adler, for some reason, wrote a letter to Cam, and it was a little
embarrassing, because it said, "Bob should get more salary. I don't agree with this," kind of thing. And it was like, I must have went [gone] back and talked to Betsy afterwards. And so, she--so, there was not really good feelings after that.Sarah Milligan 24:02
So how did you end up with all those letters?
Bob Gates 24:05
I don't know. I just--I have a file I just took home, the other day of things
that I've kept here from--.Kim Lady Smith 24:12
Betsy could have given them to you.
Sarah Milligan 24:14
See, I was just curious.
Bob Gates 24:15
Oh, how'd I get the letter originally?
Kim Lady Smith 24:16
Yeah.
Bob Gates 24:16
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's why. Well, there was a letter from--it was moving
to--moving to Western. It was in a folder called Moving to Western.Sarah Milligan 24:23
Okay.
Bob Gates 24:24
And it'll all go in the archives--.
Sarah Milligan 24:26
It's gonna go--.
Bob Gates 24:26
Yeah--.
Sarah Milligan 24:26
--In the institutional archive.
Bob Gates 24:27
Yeah, but there was [were] three or four letters in there, and was from Cam
saying that it looks like it's going pretty well, and--.Kim Lady Smith 24:33
I think there was a sense that both Western and the Heritage Council had their
own agenda for the program. It was not what the Arts Council was interested, what Bob was interested in--what we were interested in, and the Historical Society gave it more freedom to evolve.Bob Gates 24:49
There was also at Western at that time, there was some problems with professors
not getting along too well [chuckles]. And it was really, it just felt like it was gonna get buried there.Kim Lady Smith 25:01
Yeah.
Bob Gates 25:01
I kind of felt like maybe we should, and then, I guess I was consulting with you
at that time, you were saying.Kim Lady Smith 25:06
Yeah, but I was pretty much staying out of Western. We went, we were going
through so much with the whole reorganization, what was going to happen to us? That there were budget cuts, 15% budget cuts, you know. So, it was, it was a time of a lot of turmoil. So, what happened to the folklife program wasn't really at the top of my priority list, at that point. But it was always there that when the--if there's an opportunity, we'll make this happen.Bob Gates 25:34
I don't remember you telling me that yes western, "yes the historic society's
going to take the oral histories, and I'm going to go in with you." I don't remember you telling me that, but do you?Kim Lady Smith 25:45
Not really, I just remember moving you from Berea.
Bob Gates 25:48
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 25:49
It was--
Sarah Milligan 25:50
And so started a wonderful working relationship. [laughter]
Kim Lady Smith 25:54
We were already working well together--.
Sarah Milligan 25:56
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 25:56
--By then.
Bob Gates 25:57
I remember when I first got hired, Betsy Adler had a party for me in Lexington,
at some, some restaurant.Sarah Milligan 26:04
When you get [got] hired originally in Berea?
Bob Gates 26:07
Yeah, at Berea, but they wanted me to meet everybody. And I think it was you and
Betsy, or Betsy and somebody else drove me down to here to see--.Kim Lady Smith 26:18
Oh, everybody here.
Bob Gates 26:19
--To meet the Arts Council--.
Kim Lady Smith 26:20
Yeah.
Bob Gates 26:20
--To meet you and--.
Kim Lady Smith 26:21
Yeah, I remember that.
Bob Gates 26:21
--And other people. I think I came up to your office. It's funny, we were
driving down old Leestown Road, and there was like--10 skunks had been killed all over the place. And I just remember a joke about being, the closer you get to the capital, the more skunks you find. [laughter]Kim Lady Smith 26:39
Oh, you came in when [Wallace] Wilkinson was governor.
Bob Gates 26:41
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 26:43
Oh, right, yeah. That would be right.
Kim Lady Smith 26:45
Or [when] he came to the state.
Sarah Milligan 26:47
Right, and then under the Historical Study would be under [Bereton] Jones, was
that right? [sighs] Okay, so well, let's move a little bit past there. At that point then, let's start thinking about what was the--what was the thought process behind--behind actually starting a folklife festival. Because I know, Bob said that wasn't obviously high on his priority list when he started, but you had developed a lot of contacts, and had done a lot of programming in the ten years between when you got hired and when you did the first festival. So, how did that kind of happen, that you all decided to do that?Kim Lady Smith 27:24
My recollection really is the Bob decided so--.
Bob Gates 27:28
Yeah, it seems like I had been writing grants to NEA every year for some kind of
project, and I think they opened up--to--another deadline, that you could do it twice a year. And I guess I was seeing other folklorists doing festivals, and it just seemed like it was--it was a good time to do it. We had a kind of a, we had a lot of research, we had people--that--we--we had done these mini festivals. I had done these mini festivals along the Ohio River with that thing. So, I was getting back to thinking, this is the way to do it again. You know, and one of the--my advisory committee people kept saying, "oh, you got to do something big." Dick Van Kleeck told me that, he said, "you just can't do research. You have to do something big, get your name out there, get--get the program going." And all [of] those kind of fell together, I think. And I just wrote a grant--I asked you, if I could write a grant to NEA, didn't I?Kim Lady Smith 28:28
You did. Lou was supportive of it, and you and I went and talked to Jim Klotter,
because I remember that meeting to--.Bob Gates 28:35
Okay.
Kim Lady Smith 28:36
--Get his approval, and Jim, and I really did not know what we were getting
into. We just thought, "okay, Bob can get a grant. We can do this." We had no idea. No idea whatsoever what we were in store for.Sarah Milligan 28:53
Bob, did you have an idea of what you were in store for?
Bob Gates 28:55
I wanted to model it after Smithsonian. Did I go to Smithsonian before the first festival?
Kim Lady Smith 29:01
I think so, yeah.
Bob Gates 29:02
So, they, when I was in Cincinnati, there was this thing called the Visiting
Professional program. So even way back then, I took part in that and went up to Smithsonian, and went to the library, and what's the--Aerospace Museum? And the idea--that you--they would pay for you to go up and let you see behind the scenes. And so, I said--.Sarah Milligan 29:23
So, the Smithsonian had a Visiting Professional program?
Bob Gates 29:26
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 29:26
I'm sorry.
Bob Gates 29:27
So, I had taken part in that years ago, and I thought, "well, I think they're
still doing it." And I asked and they, I think they paid for me to go up. And I was there for--during the week of the festival in, I guess in '96, probably. Probably, I probably have some--documentation pictures in the archive of me going up there. And I got to--for that week, I got to talk to anybody I wanted to, basically. So, I remember the director, what's his name?Sarah Milligan 29:58
At the Smithsonian Festival?
Bob Gates 29:59
The Smithsonian Festival.
Sarah Milligan 30:00
Oh, you're thinking of the cultural heritage, what's his name? Drives a green
golf cart, what's his name? [laughter] Yeah. Oh, I can't think of it.Bob Gates 30:12
And the woman too, who was director.
Sarah Milligan 30:13
Diana Parker--.
Bob Gates 30:14
Diana Parker--.
Sarah Milligan 30:14
Diana Parker was the director, and he was--.
Bob Gates 30:15
I mean, I got to see both of them.
Sarah Milligan 30:16
--He was the head of the cultural--.
Bob Gates 30:18
His dad was working in the--in the store. His dad was one of the volunteers
working in the store, at that time. I rem--Sarah Milligan 30:25
Kurin. Was it Richard Kurin--.
Bob Gates 30:27
Kurin. Richard Kurin. I got to talk to the volunteer coordinator about how he
did, or she did, I can't remember what it was. I rode around on the cart with Diane, and really it was cool, see[ing] all these things, and I videotaped some of it. And I said, "we can do this--in Frankfort," and also the guy who was in charge of their logistics. We brought him in to look at the site beforehand. And to see you know, what he thought of. I don't know if this was before I wrote it or not, but I remember him coming. After I had been up there, he came like a couple months later, and he walked the site and told us we should use the road instead of the plaza. Remember that?Sarah Milligan 31:08
You mean Broadway?
Bob Gates 31:09
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 31:10
Yeah, Broadway instead of the--.
Bob Gates 31:11
He liked the idea of connecting the river to the other site, but he thought we
should be using--but we want to get to us that kind of. But the one thing that he did recommend that we always kept was where we placed the big soundstage.Sarah Milligan 31:24
On the Old State Capitol lawn?
Bob Gates 31:25
Yeah, because a lot of people will say, "do it, where you have the old Capitol
right behind it and you've got that image." And---but right from the start, we knew that, oh I had been working with April DeLuca on some--.Kim Lady Smith 31:37
That's right.
Bob Gates 31:38
She had been doing concerts like we do now, down here--.
Sarah Milligan 31:43
Does--April DeLuca--.
Kim Lady Smith 31:43
Yeah--.
Sarah Milligan 31:43
--Relate to Lou DeLuca?
Kim Lady Smith 31:45
Yes, they were married at the time.
Sarah Milligan 31:46
Okay.
Kim Lady Smith 31:47
I think they still were.
Bob Gates 31:48
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 31:48
But one of the things--one thing we did prior to this, that I think made the
Historical Society and all of us a little more interested in it is for a Boone Day program, we did something with artists, and Bob brought the artists to a concert on the--in front of the Old State Capitol. That everybody really enjoyed, and it had a nice crowd. You remember that?Bob Gates 32:10
Yeah, we were Boone Day was right at the kickoff of--what's the name of the big
festival. They have it--.Kim Lady Smith 32:17
The Derby?
Bob Gates 32:18
No.
Sarah Milligan 32:19
The Expo?
Bob Gates 32:20
Expo.
Kim Lady Smith 32:21
Expo.
Bob Gates 32:21
So, we were using the Friday, I think of Expo, to have our concert out here, and
it was--it brought a pretty good crowd.Kim Lady Smith 32:28
People liked it, so there was a sense that oh, yeah, something like that, we
could do that.Bob Gates 32:35
And also, years ago, and I can't remember, John Harrod was involved with a with
a festival on the Old State Capitol grounds that they called a folk festival, Kentucky, no, I think they'd called it---.Kim Lady Smith 32:48
I think the original Expo was supposed to be something like that.
Bob Gates 32:51
Yeah, I think it started out like that. They actually used the side of the Old
State Capitol. Looking at where we had the marble yard at one time, and we had the--the dance stage, that was kind of their main stage, the way he described it.Sarah Milligan 33:04
So, on the west side of the Capitol?
Bob Gates 33:05
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 33:07
The Old State Capitol?
Bob Gates 33:08
But that's kind of how the Expo started, I guess. But yeah, you're--we had a--we
had kind of a conference thing at the--.Kim Lady Smith 33:16
At the hotel.
Bob Gates 33:18
--At the hotel--.
Kim Lady Smith 33:18
And they came over (??).
Bob Gates 33:19
We had a couple scholars talking about--.
Sarah Milligan 33:22
Oh, you had Boone Day at the convention center.
Kim Lady Smith 33:26
Yeah, this is before the history center was built, so.
Sarah Milligan 33:27
Right, I keep forgetting. So, the staff was still in the Old State Capitol on
the annex there, at the Old State Capitol. That's--those are still where your offices were?Kim Lady Smith 33:35
And the Arts Council was located on the plaza.
Sarah Milligan 33:39
Oh, okay.
Kim Lady Smith 33:41
At that time.
Sarah Milligan 33:42
Like in the Fountain Square offices?
Kim Lady Smith 33:43
Fountain Square offices.
Sarah Milligan 33:44
Okay.
Bob Gates 33:44
You know where the Cheesery (??) is? That's right next to that, in a little place.
Sarah Milligan 33:49
In Fountain Square, okay.
Kim Lady Smith 33:51
So anyway, it started and grew, and suddenly we needed lots more money. And we
needed a lot of things that we just simply had no experience and the PR. The dealing with food vendors, the dealing with the logistics. We also had this huge complication of we were dealing with state, federal, city, and county property. So, we had all these--.Sarah Milligan 34:21
Oh, yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 34:22
--These issues to deal with, and we had, you know, the city, we had to get the
city support, and it just became this huge--.Bob Gates 34:33
Well.
Kim Lady Smith 34:33
Undertaking--.
Bob Gates 34:33
Even the first one, we had a lot of things.
Kim Lady Smith 34:35
This is the first one.
Bob Gates 34:36
Yeah. Well, I remember, we also did--part of--Marty Newell, when I first got
here, we were doing the apprenticeships grants. And he wanted--we said, "how can we--we can't do a big festival or something, but we ought to do something with these apprenticeships." I said, "Well, why don't we on Governor's Breakfast, have a tent up there?Kim Lady Smith 34:58
That's Derby.
Bob Gates 34:59
----And-- display our apprenticeship masters and have them do things up there.
So--we were doing that for a while, and I remember the---90 the Governor's Breakfast of the year of '97. And I had, were in the front that time. I had, I think, I had Eddie Pennington playing and some other people. --Kind of a narrative stage and performance, and it was going on all day. And it was basically us, Historical Society wasn't even involved. It was more of like an Arts Council tent.Kim Lady Smith 35:29
--It was an Arts Council--.
Bob Gates 35:30
But it was--it had folklife program with that. I think we decided to do the
festival at that time. We had a sign up front, and I remember Kim Callert (??) coming up to me, and I said, "we're going to do a festival in the Old State Capitol grounds." And she said, "not without, not without me. You're not gonna do it." I mean, she was very---.Sarah Milligan 35:48
Cause she--
Bob Gates 35:49
--She--.
Kim Lady Smith 35:49
--Was part of their.
Bob Gates 35:50
Yeah--
Kim Lady Smith 35:50
She was responsible for maintaining the Old Capitol grounds.
Bob Gates 35:53
And we didn't know anything about that, that we had to get permission from her,
that started a big roll too, didn't it?Kim Lady Smith 35:59
Yeah, it was just--it was a lot, a lot of logistics, a lot of administration, a
lot of organizing and a lot of money.Sarah Milligan 36:06
So, let me back up a little bit and put a little bit of time timeframe in this
because, when did you all decide, you are going to do a festival? Did you give yourself a year to plan?Bob Gates 36:19
We had--.
Kim Lady Smith 36:19
Yeah.
Bob Gates 36:19
--To write a grant a year before.
Kim Lady Smith 36:20
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 36:20
It was a year ahead of time that you found out--.
Bob Gates 36:22
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 36:22
--Or that you wrote the grant.
Bob Gates 36:23
And we have the grants upstairs so we---.
Kim Lady Smith 36:25
It would have been '96
Bob Gates 36:25
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 36:26
'96. So, you're talking about May of '97, you were at the Governor's Derby
Breakfast, June of 2--or of '97, you were at the---Bob Gates 36:36
--I think we already had.
Sarah Milligan 36:36
--Boone Day.
Kim Lady Smith 36:37
No, that would have been--.
Bob Gates 36:37
I think we already had this sign up, didn't we?
Sarah Milligan 36:39
Okay--.
Bob Gates 36:39
At the breakfast.
Sarah Milligan 36:41
--And the first year, it was called the Festival of Kentucky Folklife, in 1997.
So, you had a year to plan, but even rolling into May, it sounds like you still didn't know. I mean, that's what, four months away?Bob Gates 36:54
Well, we knew we were gonna do it, but we didn't know.
Kim Lady Smith 36:56
A lot of--.
Bob Gates 36:57
How we were supposed to do it.
Sarah Milligan 36:57
Right? You didn't know--all the logistics of it.
Kim Lady Smith 36:59
A lot of the issues, initially, Bob was spending his time with programming, and
we weren't paying a lot of attention to the nitty gritty logistics. We--the--he had set up the volunteer program, we had some key committees, established craft marketing was going to handle the gift shop. I'm not sure how we did, we didn't do much. We didn't do well the PR at all that first year. We were working with the city. We---but it wasn't until by the summer that we really started working with the state facilities, and learning that simple things like, the electricians who would handle the old capital, could not go to the plaza. So, that was a whole other group of people we had to work with, on the plaza, and then there was the river, which was a whole other set of people.Sarah Milligan 37:55
Right.
Kim Lady Smith 37:56
There were safety issues we had to deal with. You know, we were learning as we
went, we got nurses, you know, it was just.Bob Gates 38:04
And the main route between the Old State Capitol and the plaza was going behind
the Federal Building.Kim Lady Smith 38:10
Right, which wasn't a big problem that first year, but it came a problem later.
But you had to get permission from the federal government to allow access behind--.Sarah Milligan 38:20
Behind the building.
Kim Lady Smith 38:20
--Behind that building.
Bob Gates 38:20
Part of that was keyed with the Oklahoma bombing.
Sarah Milligan 38:24
Right, that was '94, I think.
Bob Gates 38:26
Part of it was because we were riding Gators over it and broke a couple of things.
Kim Lady Smith 38:29
Yeah, we had to deal with the fact that a lot of the facilities were not in
great shape, and that again, became more of a concern in later years. But I think that the beauty of the first festival is that we all learned that we were capable of far more than we realized. That we could do things that were completely out of our comfort zone, and that when it seemed like there's is no way you're gonna pull it together, you were able to put it together. And you know, it was really trial by by fire, Bob did a great job with the programming, but it was huge. And you know, towards the end, it was--we were just picking up pieces right and left. I remember I wasn't really worrying about garbage or, or any of that stuff until like two weeks before and I knew Bob was never gonna get to it. So, we all just sort of picked up whatever pieces needed to be done, and fundraising was key. He'd gotten $35,000, we needed over $100,000, and this was when the Historical Society was raising funds for the history center.Sarah Milligan 39:41
Oh.
Kim Lady Smith 39:42
This was not prime time for fundraising. So, we managed.
Sarah Milligan 39:48
At what point did you know that you needed more than the $35,000? Did you know
that from the start?Kim Lady Smith 39:54
Yeah, sort of but not enough--we didn't know how much we needed. Not until the
program was set and we realized how many artists we had, and what the costs of these various pieces were going to be. Bob had a pretty general sense of it because he'd done festivals before, but he hadn't done one since Louisiana.Bob Gates 40:14
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 40:15
And---.
Bob Gates 40:15
Prices had gone up, and it was easier to put up artists in those days than it
was here.Kim Lady Smith 40:21
Yeah, working with the hotel to get the rooms.
Sarah Milligan 40:23
They only have one here.
Kim Lady Smith 40:25
Right, and we were dealing with, you know, bringing in the people from Owensboro
with the barbecue, that's 20 people that we were putting up--it and our inability to raise money on site. You could not charge admission because the site is just too porous. So, there are few opportunities to generate revenue.Bob Gates 40:46
We had the--I remember going to talk to the sausage guy.
Kim Lady Smith 40:50
Yeah, Purnell.
Bob Gates 40:51
Purnell, I went to his place because there was a woman on the board of the Arts
Council who was, you know, we had to sell them on this too. And, and she was related to Purnell and took me in and interviews--introduced me. We got maybe--.Kim Lady Smith 41:07
$5,000.
Bob Gates 41:07
$5,000 from him, and did we get something from Buffalo Trace that first year?
Kim Lady Smith 41:12
No, not the first year.
Bob Gates 41:13
Okay.
Kim Lady Smith 41:13
--It was bits and pieces, mostly in-kind contributions like Joey's Maytag gave
us appliances for the foodway state. And I think the city gave us $5000 in cash that was supposed to go towards PR. Ultimately, what covered the cost of the Folklife Festival was that--and this is explained by Jim Klotter in more detail. The festival occurred in September, that's pretty early in a fiscal year. The historical--the history center was to have come online by the end of that fiscal year, it didn't. So, there was money in the budget, and Jim was able to get permission to keep that money for purposes related to the history center. You know, buying some of the computer equipment and things, but it also helped cover the cost of the Folklife Festival.Sarah Milligan 42:07
I see.
Kim Lady Smith 42:08
So--so we managed, and then we knew--from then on, we knew what we needed.
Sarah Milligan 42:14
Yeah. So--.
Bob Gates 42:17
I was gonna say Purnell, one the things he had to--we let him bring his truck on
ground, and then we had him on the foodway stage. So, this was all kind of--he [was] okay with it, but he didn't want to sponsor it the next year, did he?Kim Lady Smith 42:31
No. He didn't come back.
Bob Gates 42:32
He didn't think we had enough people, I guess,
Kim Lady Smith 42:34
Yeah, we could get $5,000 contributions. It was really hard to get a major
contribution, and it's--as you go through, you'll see, you know, eventually the Department of Education came on board. That was the other really key piece of this puzzle, is this was an education. Bringing in the school students was amazing. Vicki and Bob and crew put together a terrific program, right off the bat, for dealing with the school kids, and we did not have any trouble. We were turning people away. I think we had 5000 max, the first year or was it--?Bob Gates 43:09
I thought we came up with a max after the first year, when we felt like the
artists were overwhelmed by how many kids were there.Kim Lady Smith 43:16
Well, my recollection is--and you know, this could be wrong, you'd have to look
at the facts. Is that we went around 5000, and we went up to like 6000, and ultimately, we hit a max of 10,000, and that was when we said, "no way can we do this anymore." 10,000 was too many students. They were always--logistical issues that the schools would come no matter how you scheduled them, they came when they wanted to come. And so, the site from you know, 10:30 11 o'clock till two was just jammed, and the different artists would get mobbed.Sarah Milligan 43:51
Right.
Kim Lady Smith 43:51
So, they were always (??).
Bob Gates 43:54
After the first year, we decided it would be better to do--still have the
artists with volunteers presenting them but have some kind of--try to have adjacent to that area, some kind of children's activities. So that the kids could talk to the artists if they wanted to, but they could--they'd be drawn more to the activity. So that would kind of thin it out a little bit, and they would also be able to see those link. So, Vicky and I, we worked on them a lot together.Kim Lady Smith 44:20
And we started starting them at--part of them at the river, part of them at
different places, not just having one drop off. I mean, obviously we learned a lot. That first year, the school children was [were] a very successful part. The teachers loved the festival, and after that, Kentucky Department of Education, working with our Cabinet, came on board and gave us--by the end they, had given us $15,000 a year.Sarah Milligan 44:48
Oh, okay.
Kim Lady Smith 44:49
Annually.
Bob Gates 44:50
Huh?
Kim Lady Smith 44:50
The Department of Education.
Bob Gates 44:51
Oh, yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 44:52
Until we started, the last year that I was here, we charged school children, and
we did not get any support from Education.Bob Gates 45:00
But we were also--also dealing--was it the second year or first year when we
were going up in the tower and doing distant learning.Kim Lady Smith 45:09
Oh, yeah, you did that.
Bob Gates 45:10
We would--during the festival, we bring the artists upstairs to and they had a
room with the cameras--the interactive cameras, and we had about 10 other schools that couldn't come.Sarah Milligan 45:22
To remote video.
Bob Gates 45:23
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 45:24
Okay.
Bob Gates 45:24
Interactive video.
Sarah Milligan 45:24
In the Capital Plaza Tower?
Bob Gates 45:26
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 45:26
The Department of Education had (??)
Bob Gates 45:28
That was, you know, oh, we gotta get him up there. He's on the--.
Kim Lady Smith 45:31
I remember the artists around you know, getting radios, all this was just so new
to us.Sarah Milligan 45:35
Yeah.
Bob Gates 45:35
And it used to be, I think that was the first festival one, it came to be worth
and manaya (??).Sarah Milligan 45:41
It was manaya?
Kim Lady Smith 45:42
Yeah.
Bob Gates 45:42
Yeah, and that was, I remember the first festival, I was so tied to the radio,
that it was like problem solving every minute.Kim Lady Smith 45:50
It was--.
Bob Gates 45:51
And because nobody else had done it before, and, and I tried to explain it to
everybody, but it was such a shock when all these people started coming, and we had to, "how do we get this?" You know.Sarah Milligan 46:01
So, how was the general staff buy in? I mean, like, you talked about Vicki
Middlesworth (??), you know, doing the education piece. I mean, there's all these other people, obviously, that at some points were brought in, and was this taking away from other things they had to do, and how did they--how did they feel about this?Kim Lady Smith 46:19
I remember that, at first, you know, Bob was working with the Arts Council, and
the historic side, but we weren't working together. So, we had to, as it got closer, bring the two groups together. So, they--people were working from the same page. I also remember Gretchen Haney who was in charge of graphics, and Nathan Pritchard, had gone to Smithsonian that summer, and she called---she was sitting there with Nathan, you know in Washington--said, "this is a big deal." And so, I think this, you know, the staff is beginning to realize, and people were getting excited, scared [laughter] you know, but excited. Everybody had a job, you know, we had all the team leaders and the site managers, and they may not know what to expect, but they knew they were needed. And--.Bob Gates 47:13
And if they could do something outside of what they normally did and be good at it.
Kim Lady Smith 47:17
And be responsible.
Bob Gates 47:19
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 47:19
You know, they it wasn't--once it started, they wanted to be out there. I
remember, I asked--Kathleen Bond was my assistant, and I said, "stay here and man, the phones," and she started crying because she wanted to be out on that site. And I mean, everybody did. It was it was m--and they were needed. As soon as they were out there, if someone would see garbage needed, done, hospitality needed help. They would go where they were needed, do whatever was required. And it was--it--the volunteers, Laurie and Jim Wallace handled at the first year, with Heather.Bob Gates 47:55
Heather?
Kim Lady Smith 47:55
Heather Lyons.
Bob Gates 47:56
Oh, really, and then Brent did the second year.
Kim Lady Smith 47:59
Yeah--and it was a huge undertaking. I remember, this is the only time in my
life that I'd never slept all night. You know that I'd laid awake all night, the night before the festival. We'd been down there setting up the site. Jim Wallace was picking me up at five o'clock in the morning, and I remember that, you know, everybody was working so hard, in the dark, trying to get everything ready. And the school kids came, and I thought, "we're not ready. We're not ready. And they were here. And we have to do this." And it was just an incredible day.Sarah Milligan 48:36
So, was the first festival, remind me, it was a Thursday, Friday--.
Kim Lady Smith 48:42
It was four days.
Sarah Milligan 48:42
--Saturday, Sunday. So, you were starting that Thursday morning with the first
school groups. Bob, do you remember the first school--booked--groups coming in?Bob Gates 48:50
I kind of remember the general panic [laughter].
Kim Lady Smith 48:54
It was.
Bob Gates 48:55
And I was---I always rode my bike, didn't I, during it?
Kim Lady Smith 48:58
You did that first year, you had a golf cart. That was another thing, we had to
get the golf carts and the Gators, but you pretty much abandoned it.Bob Gates 49:05
The bike?
Kim Lady Smith 49:06
The golf cart and--.
Bob Gates 49:07
The golf car.t Yeah, well, I remember leading up to the time, one of the things
we had to do--we wanted to do the marble yard and we wanted to do it where the dance stage was later right on the--Kim Lady Smith 49:17
On the old capitol.
Bob Gates 49:18
---The lower side of the--.
Kim Lady Smith 49:19
Yeah.
Bob Gates 49:19
Northside. I think it is, the northside of the Old State Capitol.
Sarah Milligan 49:23
North is the parking lot behind the Old State Capitol, right?
Bob Gates 49:27
Okay--it's where it comes around the--.
Kim Lady Smith 49:30
It's between the federal building and the Old State Capitol.
Bob Gates 49:32
Yeah. So, we had to get special permission and an archaeologist up there--when
we dug that up, like two weeks before and because they could find anything and he--.Sarah Milligan 49:43
Right.
Bob Gates 49:43
--Was shifting--sifting through that and also, they were---they--.
Kim Lady Smith 49:47
The barbecue.
Bob Gates 49:48
--Barbecue was, we had to have the archaeologist from--who was that? I can't
remember his name; he was a state archaeologist.Kim Lady Smith 49:53
He was from the Heritage Council, I can't remember.
Sarah Milligan 49:55
To dig a pit for the barbecue?
Bob Gates 49:58
Well--.
Kim Lady Smith 49:59
They had a fire--they had a fire.
Bob Gates 50:00
They had a big fire and they had it laid down, and it was kind of a pit, yeah.
It was part of the grass.Kim Lady Smith 50:05
We had to get permission for that, too.
Sarah Milligan 50:07
So, who was in charge of the--the grounds at the Old State Capitol, at that
point? Was that the city or the state?Kim Lady Smith 50:11
That's the state, and what is that? It's---.
Sarah Milligan 50:14
Facilities.
Kim Lady Smith 50:14
Facilities management, and it's the grounds crew, and after that we got, we
developed a really good working relationship with them. I mean, there were always some hoops to jump through. You know, once, and after that year, they put sprinkler system underneath and we always had worry about where those were because of the tents.Bob Gates 50:32
And they brought in electrical lines that we hadn't had before.
Kim Lady Smith 50:35
Right, so---we they had electricians on site for us nonstop, which--we always
ended up needing their help, and the maintenance crews would come on, were assigned for the day. They didn't help with the garbage, just general.Bob Gates 50:50
But--leading up to it when--when did we make the platforms, the hundred and-so platforms.
Kim Lady Smith 50:57
Oh, right, we worked with Steve Redman and Joe Cummins, the first year.
Bob Gates 51:00
That was a friend of your husband's.
Kim Lady Smith 51:02
Yeah, Joe's a friend of ours.
Bob Gates 51:03
And he came up with the idea of, you know, I wanted--I had seen at Smithsonian
where you always put the artists a little bit off the ground, so people could see them.Sarah Milligan 51:11
Yeah, your platform's about six to ten inches or something like that.
Bob Gates 51:14
There's six inches, because it's a six--two by six--.
Sarah Milligan 51:19
Okay.
Bob Gates 51:19
--On a four by eight, with a four by--flat. So, he did it really well with
platforms going across, with the idea that they'd be moved every year, and he did all that, but was that the first year?Kim Lady Smith 51:32
--It was.
Bob Gates 51:32
I guess it was.
Kim Lady Smith 51:33
--The first year--.
Bob Gates 51:33
God, we thought out a lot of things that first year.
Kim Lady Smith 51:36
Yeah, and see, those were the things we hadn't anticipated, and Bob sort of knew
we needed them, but didn't quite have it all laid out because he--his focus was programming. We planned a festival that was just huge, and then for our first time, we didn't have the resources in place, so we had to create them.Sarah Milligan 51:56
Right, why did you all choose to do it so large the first time, instead of just
doing it at the Old State Capitol? I mean, why did you choose to do the Old State Capitol, the plaza, and the river the very first time? Bob.Bob Gates 52:09
I had been to the Smithsonian [laughter]. The layout is out there.
Sarah Milligan 52:12
I don't do things small.
Bob Gates 52:14
It's big, and I you know, I liked the three-theme type thing. I thought the
river was so beautiful that we could--and we wanted to do occupational. A lot of what--we had been doing research over the years was occupational folk culture, riverboat pilots and deckhands and fishing boats and all that--all fit really well down the river. And you could actually, I mean, I had this vision of--of having the boat, did we have the boat the first year? Well, having these guys on a barge because of the bar--there was a barge right down the river from here and we had been working. You know, where Gatti's is right now?Sarah Milligan 52:54
Gatti's Pizza?
Bob Gates 52:54
Gatti's Pizza. That was a sand and gravel company, and we didn't research with
those guys and work with them, and they were going to bring a barge up and they were going to do riverboat stuff. And I had this vision of actually having a sound--a stage down there, with the river in the background, which we always use, but I wanted to go a step farther and have the guys out on the boat, maneuvering the boat around with a sound system. That we could--we'd talk to them while they're doing it you know, the ultimate. Then all this came from the Smithsonian, because they were doing big stuff like that.Sarah Milligan 53:25
Right.
Bob Gates 53:26
They were bringing, I think the year I went there, they had Iowa or something,
but they had big combines on---on the thing, and I had done that too in Louisiana, too.Kim Lady Smith 53:39
I remember a few years later, Ann Wingrove (??) with Completely Kentucky. They'd
helped with the shop for years. And she went to the Smithsonian, and she came back and says, "ours is bigger, and ours is better," and that was what Bob---.Bob Gates 53:54
Well, you know, I thought we could do it, and I thought spacing them out would
be better, and the plaza had been used already for festivals.Kim Lady Smith 54:04
The Expo.
Bob Gates 54:05
Expo, and I thought, "that seemed like it would work." And the guy from
Smithsonian told us not to use it, didn't he?Kim Lady Smith 54:13
Yeah, apparently, but it was a large site to maneuver.
Bob Gates 54:18
I remember we were setting up and what's her name?
Kim Lady Smith 54:23
Nancy.
Bob Gates 54:23
Nancy.
Kim Lady Smith 54:24
Yeah [laughs]
Bob Gates 54:25
We had radios like three days before the festival start and--and Nancy had taken
a Gator across the little bridge--across Williamson--where you can't make that--.Kim Lady Smith 54:36
Which we told her that you couldn't--.
Sarah Milligan 54:37
That pedestrian--.
Kim Lady Smith 54:39
Pedestrian.
Sarah Milligan 54:39
Pedestrian way over Wilkinson?
Bob Gates 54:41
So, we--I got a call from her and she's stuck. [laughter] We had to push it back
through that bridge, and she is on--so, I used that for years, because we always had this relationship of Nancy and I [me]. You can't do that; you can't use our people. You know it was like--.Kim Lady Smith 54:59
You talked there about the staff, the staff really did--.
Bob Gates 55:02
Oh, yeah. They were great.
Kim Lady Smith 55:03
--Buy into it.--
Bob Gates 55:03
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 55:04
Particularly after they went through it. I had never--.
Bob Gates 55:07
Before that--yeah, people didn't understand what folklore was, and they didn't
understand what this--why would we do something like this, but there was a--.Kim Lady Smith 55:14
Right and how it impacted them. And I think, if you look at where the Historical
Society was, at that time, we were just starting to hire new people for the history center. Looking--in terms of team building, the Folklife Festival provided that opportunity in a way no one anticipated. But it worked because there were responsibilities for everyone. Everyone felt a part of it, they knew it was something special, they took a sense of accomplishment from [it]. That doesn't mean there wasn't people saying, "oh, I could do that better," or "so and so wasn't doing that right." I mean, you always had that. But during the festival itself, one thing stuck out the first festival. On Sunday morning, we needed a piano on stage, nobody had gotten a piano and you knew the logical thing was okay, "we're not going to have a piano." Well, you know, that doesn't work with Bob. So, he goes over to the hotel and asked if we can take their piano out of the lobby, and they said, "yes." And it so--suddenly we get a truck, and we have staff Gretchen Haney. I Remember Laurie and Gretchen and Ann McDonnell, was the librarian at the time, you know, got on this truck, and they moved that piano and got it onstage, got it tuned and ready to go. And I remember looking at that truck and thinking, "my gosh, [laughs] what can we do," and it brought everyone together, and I think it was just a huge team building experience. And we met afterwards, and everyone was so excited, and they published a newsletter. What was your favorite moment from the festival? And people were just really excited.Sarah Milligan 57:07
They published an internal KHS newsletter.
Kim Lady Smith 57:09
Yeah, we had a meeting where everybody got to say, you know what, they liked the
best and what they wanted to do. And it was--.Bob Gates 57:16
Yeah, and leading up to it, it was--we figured out that we were gonna do team
leaders, right?Kim Lady Smith 57:22
Yeah.
Bob Gates 57:22
And then we started, I started doing like a little slideshow of what folklife
was and what the vision of the festival--we had little meetings, didn't we? To the whole staff, so they'd buy in. But you're right, I think there was at one point where we had to pull the two together.Kim Lady Smith 57:37
Yeah.
Bob Gates 57:37
And we had volunteered--a week before we had a volunteer training thing here,
where--where people came in, we gave a talk to them. And they signed up for different things. And each team leader took them around. I think that helped, because the team leader saw who they had working for them and what their responsibility was.Kim Lady Smith 57:55
And we'd never done volunteers like that. So, it was all---.
Bob Gates 57:58
When did I start bringing that big map in that's upstairs?
Kim Lady Smith 58:01
Pretty early.
Sarah Milligan 58:02
The dry erase--?
Bob Gates 58:03
Yeah, I remember trying to take that to the city--.
Kim Lady Smith 58:06
Yeah, having the site (??).
Bob Gates 58:09
--The city at one time.
Kim Lady Smith 58:09
And let me remind you, in '97 we didn't have cell phones, we did not have you
know, everybody didn't have great computer access, or the computers weren't capable of doing what we'd been able to do in years. It was a real labor-intensive activity, putting--the tent program, laying out the tents, and did that by hand. It was--.Bob Gates 58:32
Yeah, that was always my--worst--the thing I hated the most was going out there
and--and setting up, taking a spray can, and setting up where each tent would go.Sarah Milligan 58:43
Oh, you had to mark?
Bob Gates 58:44
Yeah, and trying to figure it out and put a mark there. And it was just like--it
was the last thing you did before the tent guys got there, and that was rough. Because once they got there, they--you had to negotiate with them, where they were going to start how they would--would they get these things--. Are they actually going to get it finished before [chuckles] Thursday morning? Because we you know, we couldn't get the grounds till a couple days before.Sarah Milligan 59:07
So, how did you decide what, what artists to present? I mean, if you spent so
much time programming, I think that's always a question, too.Bob Gates 59:17
Well, you know, it was in the original grant, I think, what we were going to
present, what themes---Bill Monroe.Kim Lady Smith 59:25
Yeah, we did the tribute concert--.
Bob Gates 59:26
Tribute to Bill Monroe--.
Sarah Milligan 59:27
In '97, the tribute concert?
Bob Gates 59:29
Yeah, and I worked a lot with Western, because if you look in the book, all the
essays here are written by Western people.Sarah Milligan 59:36
The original program?
Bob Gates 59:37
Yeah--.
Kim Lady Smith 59:38
Western was involved, Michael Ann--.
Bob Gates 59:40
Michael Ann wrote [a] tribute to Sarah Gertrude Knott, "Art in Everyday Life."
So, I guess--.Kim Lady Smith 59:46
But you pulled in a lot of the people you had from the river. I mean, it was
basically 10 years of research. It wasn't--I don't recall an overarching theme that first year, other than art and everyday life.Bob Gates 59:58
I don't--.
Kim Lady Smith 59:58
We developed that--.
Bob Gates 59:59
--Think we even used that, did we? The first year, I'm not sure.
Kim Lady Smith 1:00:01
I don't think we called it that, and it was an interesting thing. I remember the
festival; how many people could not believe that we were showing the diversity. They did not understand a new (??)--they did not understand the dancers that we brought on board, which was what the festival--one of the things we were trying to do and that--.Bob Gates 1:00:21
Challenge people.
Kim Lady Smith 1:00:22
Yeah, and that first year, it was---it was an eye opener for people, and it was
a constant thing. I remember walking Ricky Skaggs to the narrative stage, and he saw somebody from an east Indian or I don't remember who, because "what's that got to do with anything?" You know, and I explained it to him.Sarah Milligan 1:00:41
Did he understand it that after that?
Kim Lady Smith 1:00:42
Oh, he said--said he did. But you know, and they came back. But you know, people
know, you know, what they think of folklore. And we were trying very much to explain to people.Bob Gates 1:00:54
I mean, that's, that's why---
Kim Lady Smith 1:00:55
--The diversity of the state--.
Bob Gates 1:00:56
That's we tried to do so much with a booklet. I mean, it was--it was--the
booklet came from the idea of Smithsonian, they always have a great booklet, it---.Sarah Milligan 1:01:04
A lot, a lot of context [was] in there.
Bob Gates 1:01:06
A lot of context--so we tried to do that the first two years, at least. And that
took a lot. And I remember, Gretchen working on that, like crazy. Had--we had people who had no idea what--about the festival, were editing it, probably a couple (??).Kim Lady Smith 1:01:22
Our editing staff, we did booklets for three years. And then, it was just too
expensive, and people weren't taking them. We were selling them, and people weren't buying them.Bob Gates 1:01:33
But the idea was to try to get the message out beforehand, a little bit. And if
I remember, right, the first year or the second year, we had really good relationships with the newspaper and actually did like four weeks beforehand, we did a series of articles about who was going to be there. And they were articles we wrote, and they put the whole thing on the front page, didn't they? I think--so it was, it was us drumming up like we've never done before.Kim Lady Smith 1:02:00
Yeah, we didn't have a PR staff, neither us nor the Arts Council. We had one
person, who you know, wasn't that experienced. So that--.Sarah Milligan 1:02:06
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 1:02:06
--Was always a challenge.
Sarah Milligan 1:02:08
So, what would you--because you mentioned that before, that you didn't feel like
you did very much with PR that first year. What were you able to do and what is the change before the second year?Kim Lady Smith 1:02:22
We got--we got some coverage on local television, and in Lexington and to some
extent, Louisville, that first year. KET [Kentucky Educational Television] came and taped the whole thing. They did a program.Bob Gates 1:02:36
Brian Crawford?
Kim Lady Smith 1:02:37
Brian Crawford.
Bob Gates 1:02:38
And I remember driving him around on the on the Gator, taking him.
Sarah Milligan 1:02:41
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 1:02:44
We had a poster--we did--you know, we had a brochure that went out to all of the
welcome centers, things like that. We relied on the city tourism, quite heavily, and of course, the school groups, there's a whole other issue. The next year, I think we just tried to be more organized. We worked more closely with--with the city. We tried to bring in tourism, Bob Stewart, we worked with travel development. Again, it depended on how much money we had, which was very little, and most of the budget was going to producing publications versus actual ads. We put ads in some key magazines, following you know, craft marketing and those kinds of audiences. But I don't think we were ever really happy with our PR. I think by the time we got to 2005, one of the most effective things that we would did then was when we did a newspaper insert, that was an abbreviated program, that went to news. It got us in the Lexington Herald, and I don't think we did the courier [Louisville Courier-Journal,] but got us in a lot of papers. We did a survey of visitors in 2001, and that survey showed that most of them found out through newspapers and that was before the insert. But also, the majority of people coming were from Frankfort. You still had--well.Sarah Milligan 1:04:18
Right, okay.
Kim Lady Smith 1:04:19
No, it wasn't--it was 45%, I think I wrote that down. Yeah. 45% in the Frankfort
area. So, a lot of it was local word of mouth, more than anything.Sarah Milligan 1:04:31
Did that number stay strong, do you know, from the beginning to the end--did
that percentage shift?Kim Lady Smith 1:04:38
Don't know--that was the only survey.
Bob Gates 1:04:40
You know, we were doing a Smithsonian-size festival with none of the staff that
Smithsonian has--.Sarah Milligan 1:04:45
Right.
Bob Gates 1:04:45
--In terms of long-term planning. Like, they'll plan a theme two years ahead of
time. They've got all these different researchers doing everything--all the research, and we were trying to do all the programming ourself [ourselves] with Western and other people. It was kind of--that was the crazy part of it, I guess was--.Kim Lady Smith 1:05:01
It was crazy, you know, and I remember looking at Bob that first year at one
point, and saying, "if I had known, we'd have never done this." [laughter] You know, finding out how much money it was going to cost, what it was going to involve and--but after the first year, we loved it, and it was---we knew it was success. We knew it was bringing in an audience we didn't have before. We felt good about what we'd accomplished. And we were stuck, we were gonna do it again.Sarah Milligan 1:05:28
So, you were already committed to doing it again by that point?
Kim Lady Smith 1:05:31
Pretty mu--after the festival, it wasn't but a couple of weeks before everyone
said, "we're gonna do it again."Bob Gates 1:05:36
Had we already--wrote a NEA grant again--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:05:38
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:05:38
--The first three or four years. We were still doing NEA grants, but they were
$50,000, weren't they? What was the figure (??).Kim Lady Smith 1:05:46
I don't remember.
Bob Gates 1:05:46
I mean, I always asked for 80, usually got 50.
Kim Lady Smith 1:05:51
But we were a little more successful with our fundraising, and I mean, it was
always a struggle. We never quite met our budget, but we always found the money one way or another. And again, the fact that the festival was happening in the first quarter, by the time you got to the last quarter, if the agencies had any surplus, it helped, and in those early years, a surplus was not unusual, I think as that (??).Sarah Milligan 1:06:15
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 1:06:16
So, so we managed, but ultimately, it was finances that caused us to stop after
five years and sit back and look at what we needed. I mean, there were a lot of reasons, but finances was [were] the primary one.Sarah Milligan 1:06:28
Of the--annually of doing the festival.
Kim Lady Smith 1:06:31
Stopped doing it.
Sarah Milligan 1:06:32
So, '97, '98, '99, 2000, 2001.
Kim Lady Smith 1:06:37
And then we took a year off to evaluate.
Sarah Milligan 1:06:42
That's what the original year off was supposed to be, just evaluation?
Kim Lady Smith 1:06:46
Yeah, we always said we'd come back. We always said we'd be back in 2003. You
know, if you look at the newspaper accounts from then I mean, I ran across one, we said we'd be back before we (??).Bob Gates 1:06:56
Yeah, I found a couple the other day.
Kim Lady Smith 1:06:58
Because we always joked that we had to take a year off, so Brett and Mark get
married in the summer. Because Billy, as you recall, the folklorists could do nothing in the summer but work Folklife Festival.Sarah Milligan 1:07:07
That's true.
Bob Gates 1:07:09
And when they left, we actually had a mini–Folk Festival in my house, didn't we.
Kim Lady Smith 1:07:12
Yeah, I think so, that summer.
Bob Gates 1:07:13
I videotaped it--they had.
Sarah Milligan 1:07:15
Brent left.
Bob Gates 1:07:16
And when he left, we had signage out and we called it "The Brent and Anne Folk Festival."
Sarah Milligan 1:07:20
And that was in 2005--2004--2004.
Bob Gates 1:07:22
I remember--I was just thinking about when--how nervous we were getting before
the first one, And I was riding my bike around, trying to get this done and this done and this--and I remember a city coming over. And I was riding and I-- somebody yelled at me over here, somebody yelled at there. I hit my brakes and went over top of the handlebars, and I think I did that twice. [laughter]Kim Lady Smith 1:07:47
Yeah, I can still see him. He actually--he somersault[ed] off the bike, you
know, did the somersault, got up and went straight to the person who asked. [laughter]Bob Gates 1:07:53
Act like it didn't happen.
Kim Lady Smith 1:07:54
There was no--.
Bob Gates 1:07:54
I meant to do that.
Sarah Milligan 1:07:56
It was just for you, oh no.
Kim Lady Smith 1:07:58
Yeah, and as I said, it was very physical. It was---not just the walking, but
you had to help move whatever needed moved, and put up wherever needed put up, and it was--.Bob Gates 1:08:09
To me, the success of how well the staff was working on different festivals was
the first festival was like Bob on the radio every, every second--every minute. "Bob, what do we do now? Bob, what do we do now? This, this is going over here." They're trying to move their stuff--they're--they were trying to move their--they--oh what was it. The farmers market came in.Kim Lady Smith 1:08:34
Oh, yeah, I remember that.
Bob Gates 1:08:34
And I had them scheduled to be over here, but they all decided they were going
to go over here instead. So that was a big thing, and the kids were getting cut by when they were doing--.Kim Lady Smith 1:08:44
Oh, yeah.
Bob Gates 1:08:44
--Corn husk or something. No, it was sorghum, and they were getting cut and all
these little things that we had to problem solve right at the time. So--but, like the second year it started, you didn't hear my name on it anymore. Or the third year, you hardly heard it at all. It was---we had a good communication center. People knew what they were supposed to do, and people were problem solving themselves.Kim Lady Smith 1:09:05
One of the things we did the second year was, we came up with standard operating
procedures, and we put somebody in the operating tent--.Bob Gates 1:09:13
SOP.
Kim Lady Smith 1:09:13
--That monitored all the radios and could--was the person who would call for
emergencies. You know, would call the fire department or whatever you might need. Nurses were there, so things were more centralized, and we all had a better sense of what to expect. I started getting more calls probably then as--it was less for Bob because they were not--because Bob took over--continued to focus on programming, I moved more towards logistics. And so, you know, we had the lost school children, you know, we had food vendor issues, we had lost artists. --We had beestings, and you know--we had to shut down one tent because the wasps took it over. One of the hospitality tents. I mean there were always some--. I remember--. --Some issue--.Bob Gates 1:10:08
Yeah--and who was that who ran the van around from Heritage Council?
Sarah Milligan 1:10:14
Roger.
Bob Gates 1:10:14
--He used to work--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:10:15
Roger Stapleton.
Bob Gates 1:10:16
Roger Stapleton, and we had people that just liked the jobs they did, and like,
I wouldn't think riding a van around and not seeing any of the festival, but--it's just interacting with the artists and taking---bringing them up from the, from--from, from the hotel up here, making sure they're on time. That was his job, and he just seemed to love it every year.Kim Lady Smith 1:10:35
He and Dan Sawyer came back after they retired, and that was part of it, people
took the jobs that they were comfortable with, and were good at. And it wasn't--it wasn't quite as complicated after that.Bob Gates 1:10:48
Some artists needed to be paid in cash. That's the way you know, bands often did
and, and I remember having to drive these guys up during the festival, to a bank. With Dan's wire, or maybe it was Roger, and getting the money for them. I remember that--I met him in the second festival. We had a blues night, and the blues group that was scheduled to come, couldn't make it at the last minute. So, we had to get somebody else, and you know how checks are around here. You had to get the checks ahead of time, and this guy was not so--so--he's--the guy's up there, he's got this belt on with like, 20 harmonicas, and he's pretty mean looking. I mean, pretty rough looking, and he's playing away like crazy. And so, my job was to go up to afterwards and tell him, “We don't have a check for you right now. Because we didn't know you were, you know, we just got you today or yesterday, I'll have to pay." And he wasn't gonna leave until I got him the money. I had to find Linda upstairs, and she wrote an emergency check for--.Kim Lady Smith 1:11:49
We had an outside account, we had to set up outside account that got us through
quite a bit. And that's where we would put any donations--that came in went into the--the outside account and stuff from the gift shop at that point, it wasn't managed by the society, it was managed by Craft Marketing. Anne Windrove and Liz Taylor. So, you know, that helped us out in emergencies, many times, so. But yeah, I mean, it was---it was complicated. It was just--a complicated even.Bob Gates 1:12:23
We had good sound crew though, that was a good. Because we had--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:12:26
Yeah, that was always a key.
Bob Gates 1:12:28
We had sound crew--a sound crew that we had worked with on the Tour of Kentucky
Folk Music. I mean, because part of the idea was, a lot of these small communities that got the grant to have a concert really didn't have good sound.Sarah Milligan 1:12:40
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:12:40
So, I got the guy from Owensboro, Joel, I think it was. Had a good relationship
with him for a while---for a while. [laughs] Anyway, but we realized that he wasn't big enough to do the big concert outside and the indoor concert, so we got this other guy who was good with Bluegrass from (??) or something.Kim Lady Smith 1:12:58
Now, I can't think of his name, but he was very good.
Bob Gates 1:13:00
So, it was always a--always kind of complicated in the beginning years, trying
to figure out who would be good sound--Sarah Milligan 1:13:05
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:13:05
---And how we would get them to--.
Sarah Milligan 1:13:07
It's still complicated.
Kim Lady Smith 1:13:08
--Yeah, and like the first year, we had Skaggs do the tribute concert, and we
put that in the civic center and charged--and--but we only got about 1,200, 1,500 people come and then we comped so many things.Bob Gates 1:13:22
We had 3,500 down there.
Kim Lady Smith 1:13:25
Oh, I don't know---it seemed (??).
Sarah Milligan 1:13:26
How much did you charge, do you remember?
Kim Lady Smith 1:13:29
Not exactly, but I'm thinking it was like $12 a ticket, it wasn't much. And this
was in '97, remember.Bob Gates 1:13:35
That was three groups there though that night?
Kim Lady Smith 1:13:37
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:13:37
It was--
Kim Lady Smith 1:13:38
--It was the Osborne--I looked this up, the Osborne Brothers and J.D. Crowe.
Bob Gates 1:13:43
Yeah, because that afternoon before that concert, we had a narrative stage with
all three of those guys on stage talking. Well, maybe not the Osborne Brothers, but I remember, J.D. Crowe and Ricky Skaggs being on the stage. And I think Erica may have led it. And it was all about their memories of working with Bill Monroe.Kim Lady Smith 1:14:01
Yeah, it was a good concert. And--Skaggs was very supportive and wanted to help
out in the future, but she has--. So, it was--it was a good event. Again, you know, it was like another learning experience. You know, we had this contract with Skaggs that was very specific, and I was handling that contract pretty much. Because it was a little more complicated and a lot more money. So, I was trying to honor this by you know, they wanted so many white towels in their room and so many bottles of water and they wanted a certain amount of food in a buffet and all this. So, I worked with the hotel, and we set up a buffet and I got the towels, and it was a joke because we had these Ricky Skaggs towels afterwords. And his road manager, I spent a lot of the day--that day with his road manager and he said, "you didn't have to do any of that." [laughter]Sarah Milligan 1:14:57
He was in the (??).
Kim Lady Smith 1:14:58
"We would [have] loved to have had food [a] ticket." So, you know, I at that
point--I learned, okay, you can negotiate this. You don't just have to sign the contract; you can figure this stuff out. So it was that in itself--.Bob Gates 1:15:10
Yeah--we had--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:15:10
--Was a learning experience.
Bob Gates 1:15:11
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:15:12
So, I'm looking at this program from the 1997, and it looks like you have three
stages scheduled. Old State Capitol, Plaza, and a narrative stage. So, when you first did this, did you only have three stages, like three real[ly] like, programmed stages?Bob Gates 1:15:29
There wasn't any river stage there.
Kim Lady Smith 1:15:31
There should have been.
Sarah Milligan 1:15:32
It's not on the day-to-day.
Bob Gates 1:15:34
Well, I talk about it, I could show you--.
Sarah Milligan 1:15:36
Oh, there was like a mentioned that may be here--it doesn't look like it's
programmed, it looks like it's just hourly programming.Bob Gates 1:15:41
--We called it--I called it--I remember in the introduction; I called it a
second narrative stage down at the river. So, we had the--the ability to do narrative stages, and we ended up doing some music down there too. So, it was kind of--.Sarah Milligan 1:15:52
So, you had four. You had the Old State Capitol--.
Bob Gates 1:15:54
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:15:54
--Plaza and narrative stage. So, at what point did you grow out to St. Clair?
Kim Lady Smith 1:15:59
That was after 2001.
Sarah Milligan 1:16:02
So, it was after?
Kim Lady Smith 1:16:03
That was the 2003, it was the first time we were on St. Clair.
Sarah Milligan 1:16:04
Okay.
Kim Lady Smith 1:16:05
That was part of the decision that was made in that year that we were off.
Sarah Milligan 1:16:07
So, how did you do evaluations in the year you were off, and what were some of
the decisions you made?Bob Gates 1:16:16
We got a TAG [Technical Assistance Grant] grant and brought in two art--a TAG
grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, traditional arts. Oh, traditional arts grants or something--but it was---it was a small thing that would allow--a small amount of money allow consultants come in. So, we had Marsha McDowell, and Mike Lester, Lester?Sarah Milligan 1:16:37
Lester.
Bob Gates 1:16:38
Lester. Mike had been doing the Louisiana Folk Festival in Monroe for some years
after I left. After I left, they did it--after I left Louisiana, they did it in New Orleans, across the river from New Orleans. I can't remember the parish that's--and then they started doing up in Monroe, and he kind of kept it there. So--his was kind of a model of, of how to make some money on it and how to get----get a wider audience. He came up with the idea that we—the--the Friends of Folklife--Folk Festival. He introduced that as a--what--he had the Friends of Louisiana Folk Festival as an insider's network. And it was really before--it was email, but it was---once people started using email and thinking about how you could---you could use it better. So, we started that, and that was one of his suggestions. But we had him in there. And they met with all of us a couple of time.Kim Lady Smith 1:17:37
We came up with a committee that was included. Staff, artists, people from the
city and you know, logistic people and Bob Stewart from tourism and Steve Brooks from the city that met periodically. We had focus group discussions on things related to you know, the programming, the education pieces. We had done that survey the year before, from the Travel Office. So, they helped us, you know, interpret that information. We looked at an alternative site, we went to the Horse Park, and we looked seriously at moving to the Horse Park, and ultimately decided that the only advantage would be that we could charge for parking. And that---we didn't see that offsetting the logistic--logistical issue. Managing the site, it was very clear that for the festivals to succeed, you needed the Historical Society staff. You know, the--the contribution, we figured out the cost of communications--.Bob Gates 1:18:38
And the Arts Council staff.
Kim Lady Smith 1:18:39
Yeah, but Laurie would always say, "the Arts Council can provide resources, but
not staff." It's the Historical Society that has to provide staff. Just I mean, that's just--.Sarah Milligan 1:18:48
Different sized--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:18:49
Right, different--sized agencies. And you know, we looked at the cost of all
that. And so, moving into another location, you know, created a whole other set of issues. So, but we took that seriously. We--you know--they gave us a proposal. We looked at programming, themes, whether we needed more themes. We looked at the funding, what did we need. We came up with, I found this, that we needed to ultimately have to under $250,000 a year for the festival. We decided that we--.Bob Gates 1:19:21
--And I had also been--gone to the Michigan Folk Festival, too.
Kim Lady Smith 1:19:26
That's right.
Bob Gates 1:19:26
A couple times and that's why--
Sarah Milligan 1:19:27
The Great Lakes Folk Festival, which is where Marsha McDowell is--.
Bob Gates 1:19:30
--It was the Michigan Folk Festival on--before that before the Great Lakes, it
was on the grounds of the University of Michigan in Lansing. So, I went a couple times and one time I was I guess I was--.Kim Lady Smith 1:19:45
You were a consultant, weren't you?
Bob Gates 1:19:46
I was a cons--I was the evaluator for NEA for that. Then I was the evaluator for
NEA later on for the--when it became the Great Lakes--where actually, it was part of the National Folk Festival and then it became the Great Lakes.Sarah Milligan 1:19:57
I see.
Bob Gates 1:19:58
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 1:19:59
So, there were a lot of programming ideas being discussed. You know changing the
site, changing that emphasis. One thing you know, we had--for the first two years, we were four days, and then we went down to three. So, we had already made that decision that--that three was enough. There was a lot of discussion about, people saw it as two festivals, one for school students--school children and one for adults. And that was always seen as a potential problem. And---it was logistically, it did have some issues, but those kinds of things were discussed and--you know, we came up with some recommendations, about funding, and about the site. And Bob really did more of the programming emphasis. We were working on themes then, we had already done themes, we'd done Highway 21---Bob Gates 1:20:46
--And it came up that the Plaza was--even though it felt good up there, it
became too hot, and people were--.Kim Lady Smith 1:20:54
And it was dangerous.
Bob Gates 1:20:54
Many of our staff was [were] saying is that they were dying out there.
Sarah Milligan 1:20:56
--What was dangerous about it?
Kim Lady Smith 1:20:58
It's crumbling--and we had the festival, the Federal Plaza was worse. By the
time we got to the fifth year---and keep in mind 2001, we had--it was 9/11. And we had to deal with all kinds of security issues and change our security plan. I mean, that was another thing--the operating procedures had----we outlined all kinds of security issues. What to do if we had to stop the festival, who would cancel the festival, who you had to contact. You know if there was a major storm, what would you do, where would you. There was a tornado coming through, like we had yesterday, where would you move the school children, all that kind of stuff was in there, but. So, we had all those issues to deal with, but the Federal Plaza, I think that year was they--they weren't gonna let us have access across. It wasn't any--question anymore about programming because it was crumbling. It was dangerous, and it could not--we could not run a Gator across it. You could only run a golf cart, and I remember, we had what we called a work cart, that was in between, and Brent was driving it across, and they came out and stopped him. You know, the security folks from the federal building? Yeah---Sarah Milligan 1:22:08
Did they really draw their guns?
Kim Lady Smith 1:22:09
No, but they were you know, "you can't do this." And so, it was a struggle. So,
it was just too problematic, because you really couldn't get to the Plaza, unless you could go across the federal. And so, it just, and we had people sprain their ankles, you know, twist their ankles on where the--.Sarah Milligan 1:22:27
It's uneven.
Kim Lady Smith 1:22:28
--The towers--or the concrete towers were uneven and--.
Bob Gates 1:22:31
And we may have caused a little bit of that the first festival, when we were
driving Gators across there.Kim Lady Smith 1:22:36
Oh, we had some programming on there, the first festival. So, it was always--we
had to ask permission. Every year, it was one of my jobs, and I had a right to this one woman, and they wrote a letter letting us use the Federal Plaza--but--Bob Gates 1:22:48
We had dance out there, I remember the--I remember we had the steppers from
K-State [Kentucky State University] up there one time, maybe the first or second year. A German band playing in.Kim Lady Smith 1:22:57
The programming was always fun. We had great program; the dancers were very
popular. But anyway, we got through 2001 and decided, "okay, well, we're going to ultimately work towards an annual festival, but for now, until we could reach this financial goal of $250,000 a year, we would go on every other year basis." And we were looking at budgets of around $175,000 was basically our goal. So, we had gone up considerably, but the prices had gone up.Sarah Milligan 1:23:31
How did you, yeah--how did you move from that first year, where you needed
$100,000 to five years later, needing 250,000? Why did--why did you shift the goal from, we need more money, instead of we need to change the programming?Kim Lady Smith 1:23:47
You had--we needed to pay the artists more. With--the cost of lodging had gone
up; the cost of the sound crews had gone up. The cost of the tents had gone up. We were not getting the kind of support we needed from the city, the in-kind contributions weren't cutting it.Bob Gates 1:24:04
And we tried to point that out to the city that--when we went to see the city
manager, I guess after we had been up--I had been up to Michigan and they were--the city was putting like $100,000 of work in you know, no just matching, but a lot of facilities and things. And they were putting money in--they [are] putting money in as well as in kind. The only thing we ever got from the city here, I mean, mainly it was in kind.Kim Lady Smith 1:24:29
Right, and there was also--a plan was to hire a full-time festival manager. It
was considered that we needed that.Sarah Milligan 1:24:36
Was that from one of your advisors, did they suggest that?
Kim Lady Smith 1:24:40
It was a recommendation that came out of that----that whole year's evaluation,
which I found in Mark's papers, the final documents, and recommendations. Yeah, because it was just too intensive. It impacted the Folklife program and at that---it dominated the work of the Folklife program. To the extent that they were not able to do everything else. It was hard to do research for a festival, that would even support a festival--if you were doing a festival every year. We just did not have the resources.Sarah Milligan 1:25:10
Right.
Kim Lady Smith 1:25:10
So, a lot of it was---was related.
Bob Gates 1:25:13
And there were other programs that the Arts Council was coming up with that they
wanted to do during the year. There was still the Governor's Derby Breakfast and the Crafts Market, which it became kind of a--. I remember Nancy Atcher saying, "well, we did the folk festival for you, this is your turn to pay us back." And we actually worked at the Craft Market a couple of times--.Kim Lady Smith 1:25:34
I did.
Bob Gates 1:25:34
--We volunteered. I always worked there. So, it was always seen as we were being
pulled into trends that the Arts Council was doing, and so it's like, "can you do the festival and do this?"Sarah Milligan 1:25:49
Well, what about KHS, did the staff here feel like it was dominating--when it
was an annual event, did they feel like it was dominating different programs?Bob Gates 1:25:58
I don't think so.
Kim Lady Smith 1:25:59
No, but you also have to keep in mind, you know, in '99, we opened the history
center. So, we'd gone through two festivals without the history center, and so they're, you know, emphasis is shifting to getting the history center up and operating, and--doing more things here. So, staff was--had more work to do, in general. But I don't think anybody really wanted to see the festival stop. They, I mean, you talk about the cost, you know, part of the cost was to offset the fact that you could not use staff--the PR that was needed, you know, you needed to get---to outsource that somehow.Bob Gates 1:26:38
And we had been using volunteers early on, in the like the first two years, I
remember having--.Kim Lady Smith 1:26:42
Yeah, we relied on volunteers.
Bob Gates 1:26:44
--Two hundred volunteers doing different things, but--and I remember going with
Vicki Middlesworth to UK Teacher's College and signing up about 50 teachers to come and be presenters out there. And we did [the] training for him. But there was--I always--seen the Smithsonian model as having a lot of volunteer people who had higher, you know, responsibilities. Our volunteers were kind of plugins, you had a job here, you plug them to do that, then they have to have a lot of training. If they were presenting somebody that day, our--we showed them how--we gave him a little training about how to present, but basically, they were supposed to learn, interview that---get to know that person early in the morning. So, they can present it--.Kim Lady Smith 1:27:33
And it didn't work that way--.
Bob Gates 1:27:34
--During the day. Some--sometimes it did but--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:27:35
We had the core volunteers who were very good.
Bob Gates 1:27:38
And then we had the Western Kentucky students who--it became--it evolved to be
they were the presenters. And so, we did workshops with them beforehand, and they came up and they--they were pretty good at presenting. I remember trying to get them to use the little microphones and do impromptu and little narratives. Some of them would do it, some of wouldn't, you know, depending on their personality. And I think that was a good training for a lot of them, but there was always this--I remember, trying to work with Vicki about. Well, there's this general feeling that, "well, we're state, we're good at what--we're we work for the state, and we're trained, and we should be doing this, and volunteers should be doing that." And I I always felt like we should be moving toward, like at the Smithsonian where you get these volunteers who have power, and they're trained to be---not power, but they're, you know what I'm saying.Kim Lady Smith 1:28:33
They have responsibility.
Bob Gates 1:28:34
They have responsibility.
Kim Lady Smith 1:28:35
Above just sitting in a tent and make sure somebody has water.
Bob Gates 1:28:37
Yeah, it's not, it's not--and I had a couple of people who followed me around
for years who--I was kind of training do that, and we never got to that level as much as I thought we should.Kim Lady Smith 1:28:50
No--not in that area. There were other things thought that when you talk about staff's--support.
Bob Gates 1:28:56
Because we could, in a sense, like my wife volunteering down--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:29:00
Oh, yeah!
Bob Gates 1:29:00
--Doing the family folklore tent, she did that--she did the whole programming
for that. But she also got all the people, all her friends to volunteer to be down there. So, they were more than just plug in.Kim Lady Smith 1:29:12
They were a team.
Bob Gates 1:29:13
They were a team that worked that area, and sometimes that was seen as kind of a
threat, in a way.Kim Lady Smith 1:29:18
Oh, well, that was just Vicki. [laughs]
Bob Gates 1:29:19
Well, you were right, it was just Vick. But that also kind of kept us from--from
doing the full-fledged volunteer coordination, training thing.Kim Lady Smith 1:29:29
Training the volunteers more.
Bob Gates 1:29:31
Because there's always this--
Kim Lady Smith 1:29:32
--The--part of the issue, too, is just we could--it was very hard to focus on
one aspect and make it everything we wanted it to be.Bob Gates 1:29:41
To be as good--. There would always be--. There [were] was compromises.
Kim Lady Smith 1:29:48
--To others--. Things got more complicated, too, when we lost control with the
Old State Capitol Annex. That made that--the grounds are complicated. When we had to move into the history center, and even when the history center opened, and our group--the Outreach group was still over there, you lost that day-to--day interaction that made things a little more complicated. And then, when we lost the ability to control the grounds and the Economic Development Cabinet took that over, that made things a little more--.Sarah Milligan 1:30:19
2004, 2005--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:30:20
--Complicated.
Sarah Milligan 1:30:21
Is that when that happened, or was it earlier?
Kim Lady Smith 1:30:23
2005 was the first year we had to really deal with that with--.
Sarah Milligan 1:30:25
With Economic Development.
Kim Lady Smith 1:30:26
Right.
Sarah Milligan 1:30:27
Was Outreach still over there the 2003--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:30:29
Yes.
Sarah Milligan 1:30:29
--Festival?
Kim Lady Smith 1:30:30
Yes.
Bob Gates 1:30:31
So, how did you talk him into---I remember, we had to have a meeting with the
director over there.Kim Lady Smith 1:30:35
I don't know how I talked him into--
Bob Gates 1:30:36
Promise him seats or something.
Kim Lady Smith 1:30:38
No, although--I'll always remember the meeting. Because I was with Kent and
Lindy Casebier, and this guy's assistant-- Sean's assistant was sitting there and basically said, "no, you can't do this." And all at that point we were looking for is the parking lot. By then, you know, we knew we could get the grounds. Whether we could do everything we wanted with it, but we needed the parking lot, and we needed the parking lot early. Because of the stages coming in and all this, and he said, "no." And I just wouldn't give up, and I just kept saying, "this is what the problems were for the building before, and this is how we'll handle it. This is how we'll handle this. This is how we'll handle this." And finally, he said, "okay," and no sooner did--you know we got it, but there were certain parking places we were not allowed to use, including Gene Strongs, the commissioner, I think that was his name. And the day they were loading, they were bringing up all the portlets--the porta potties, and the guy said, "can I leave my truck here? I'll be right back." No sooner did he leave his truck there, and then that was the spot for the commissioner, and he showed up. But at the end of the festival that night was Skaggs' concert. And this, I'm saying, commissioner, I think it was the secretary, he had a secretary. He comes to the back, and I get this radio message from Shannon saying, "what do I do? He wants to come backstage. He says this is his building." And so, I went back, and I brought him in and his date or his wife or whatever and introduced him to Skaggs and he loved the festival. And he was--what could he do to make sure we got funding in the future? Obviously, that didn't occur, but he was our best buddy that night. So, it was--it was interesting to try it. But even then, we didn't, we lost the basement, we lost the ability to be upstairs. We ended up with a trailer from facilities that we used, which was very awkward. It was harder to run the festival, when we weren't on the site, where we couldn't control.Bob Gates 1:32:36
Well, you know, we still had some inside people, the maintenance people there
that worked with us. But officially, we weren't supposed to be doing much in the basement.Sarah Milligan 1:32:44
And that was really 2005.
Bob Gates 1:32:46
I think so.
Sarah Milligan 1:32:47
Because I remember we had, we had--there were like three people who had keys to
the basement--.Kim Lady Smith 1:32:51
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:32:51
--Where you could use the bathroom, but that was more for performers. But that
was it, right? I mean, that was.Bob Gates 1:32:58
Yeah--we used to use the second--the first floor as kind of a dressing room for
the main.Kim Lady Smith 1:33:02
We couldn't do that anymore, for the main stage.
Bob Gates 1:33:06
When [Sherry] Jelsma was there, I remember that was okay to do, use her offices.
Kim Lady Smith 1:33:09
See, all these things changed and made things more complicated and made--it’s
the nature of politics in state government. You know, by the last festival, we had the [Ernie] Fletcher administration. We'd had the two years of Judy Patton as our honorary chair. You had to do---you had to convince people to support it. And Bob mentions the city. When Ken Thompson was city manager before he left, he tried very hard to lobby on our behalf, with the city of Frankfort, to get annual funding for the festival. But you know, by the time you get into the 2000 budgets, there was money in the 90s, there was no money. And so, it was much harder to get people to support.Sarah Milligan 1:33:48
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 1:33:49
But so, by 2005, we still had money, it's after that things really started to go bad--.
Bob Gates 1:33:53
I don't know--Ken Thompson coming down afterwards and saying, "this is a really
high-quality festival. This---I will support this. I've never seen anything like this before, it's nothing----"Kim Lady Smith 1:34:03
We had to prove that we could do it, and they felt it was a very strong,
family-oriented, a good festival for the city of Frankfort but--.Sarah Milligan 1:34:09
Was that after the '97?
Kim Lady Smith 1:34:11
Yeah, I'd have to (??)--nice, but it wasn't until, like 2000 when he was trying
to help us. I mean lobby, because we couldn't lobby for it, we're not allowed to lobby.Sarah Milligan 1:34:20
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 1:34:20
So--.
Bob Gates 1:34:22
I think--I think our---the quality of how we presented things, the story that we
told, was always high quality. And, you know, because I got to go to the Smithsonian, we started this thing called the VIP program, pretty early on, didn't we? Like the second year?Kim Lady Smith 1:34:37
Yeah, I remember, you really worked with Laurie on that.
Bob Gates 1:34:39
Yeah, and the idea was that, just like the Smithsonian was a model to us, me and
other state folklorists, we wanted the Folklife Fest to be a model to other festivals, and we're still reaping that. I mean, we gave grants through the Arts Council to communities, to do festivals, but a lot of times, they--the year before that--before they got the grant, they were a VIP at the festival. And they got to do just kind of what I did for---when I went to the Smithsonian, they, they walked around with Laurie and got introduced to different people. And I remember there's a picture of her talking to Nancy, about logistics. And they wanted to the narrative stage and then they got to take--the second day they were there, they got to--got to take part in like a narrative stage or something that they would take back to their festival. A lot of those people wrote grants and--and I mean, a prime example is the Mushroom Festival down in--.Sarah Milligan 1:35:32
Estill.
Bob Gates 1:35:32
Estill County is one that and Eddie Pennington's festival, send people here, a
lot of people. And you know--had done that. That VIP thing was something we kept going.Kim Lady Smith 1:35:45
Yeah, that one we kept all the way through.
Bob Gates 1:35:46
And then we developed the--in the last couple of years, I don't know, when we
actually did it. It was a training of--a cultural diversity training for--.Kim Lady Smith 1:35:55
State employees.
Bob Gates 1:35:55
--State workers.
Kim Lady Smith 1:35:56
You did that in 2000--I think maybe 2005, but 2007 was the big year for that.
Sarah Milligan 1:36:01
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 1:36:02
Bob always pushed that, but we had to get people to buy in to letting state
workers take the time--Bob Gates 1:36:07
I was--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:36:07
---To come down.
Bob Gates 1:36:08
--Pretty surprised that it worked. And the--one of the ideas was we had, we'd
have all these kids here at one o'clock, they would start leaving at 1:30, 2 o'clock.Kim Lady Smith 1:36:20
Yeah, and then we had a dead time.
Bob Gates 1:36:20
And then it got dead, and we were still doing a concert at night sometimes on Friday.
Kim Lady Smith 1:36:24
Always.
Bob Gates 1:36:25
Yeah, always on Friday nights, but we quit on Thursday nights after a while. But
we had this empty area, and what could we do? Well, let's do training for state workers. And so, it was kind of narrative stage type thing, I mean, I remember--who was the professor at Western, who left?Sarah Milligan 1:36:46
Chris.
Bob Gates 1:36:47
Chris.
Sarah Milligan 1:36:48
Hansen--.
Bob Gates 1:36:48
--He did a really neat thing with alfombras. And, and, and I did something with
K State [Kentucky State University] and senior citizens---as being a folk group and--had that--.Sarah Milligan 1:37:04
Do you all need a break or anything?
Kim Lady Smith 1:37:06
We could take a break, or we can wind up soon, whatever you want to do.
Sarah Milligan 1:37:09
Up to you.
Kim Lady Smith 1:37:10
There's one thing that I want to say before I forget it, when we--I think the
folklife festivals were a tremendous success for all of the stakeholders. You know, and maybe some of the funders might not think so, but from an educational standpoint, from the promotion of cultural diversity, for the society, for the Arts Council, for--you know, we all benefited. And I think we even became better workers, better employees, because of the festival. But I'll always remember Mike Hudson, who is--during that year that we were off, and we came up with a new mission statement and all this stuff. And you know, I---during that time was when I really started to find out what the staff thought. And--his response was, "I'm proud to be part of an agency that has this system (??) mission. I'm proud to do you know, the Folklife program," and that, you know, I think that really summed up how we all felt about it, all the way through. So, I'm sorry, we don't keep doing it.Sarah Milligan 1:38:15
We don't.
Kim Lady Smith 1:38:16
Even though I could never physically do it again. [laughter]
Bob Gates 1:38:20
Well, we would have had more volunteers.
Sarah Milligan 1:38:22
Right, he's looking at me still. He's still making it better.
Bob Gates 1:38:26
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:38:26
Right, "we could do it, Kim."
Kim Lady Smith 1:38:29
Okay, so--go from there.
Sarah Milligan 1:38:30
I was gonna say when the--downtime, you talked a little bit about the evaluation
that you did Well, so what--when you came back in 2003, what are the things that you did change? What are the things that you implemented, out of those?Kim Lady Smith 1:38:42
The biggest change was the site--changed.
Sarah Milligan 1:38:45
It moved from the Plaza to Broadway, and you opened up St. Clair?
Bob Gates 1:38:49
Yeah. And using the Friends of Folk Festival, I think that was--that helped out
get the message--actually did help get the message out across the state a little bit better.Sarah Milligan 1:38:59
Do you have any idea how many people do that newsletter now?
Bob Gates 1:39:02
Mark said something like, 6000 now.
Sarah Milligan 1:39:04
Is that--.
Bob Gates 1:39:06
Yeah, and it started out like 100. But it's---it changed from Friends of the
Folk Festival [to] the Friends of the Folklife Program.Sarah Milligan 1:39:14
Right.
Bob Gates 1:39:14
And then it went from--it was supposed to have like this underground feel to it.
Like, I'm getting news directly from Bob Gates and, and Mark about what's going on. So, I'm going to spread it around because I'm an insider, and that was kind of the idea of it. Then it became kind of, well, this should be one of our publications. You know, it should be a normal newsletter type thing, that has a deadline. And before, it was more like whenever we thought of something neat, we put it out there. And I think that changed the feel of it, but I don't know if people respond to this insider thing anymore as they did then.Sarah Milligan 1:39:52
I was gonna say. Communication styles have changed, too, since then.
Bob Gates 1:39:54
Yeah, I mean, it's more--it's more of a printed piece.
Kim Lady Smith 1:39:58
We did try to do more with creating a web presence. It was still 2002, it was
still, people won't working web like they do now. But, you know, we recognized that. We knew there was [were] a lot of PR issues that needed to be changed. Now, whether we had the resources to change that, I can't recall. Although, by 2005, when Alice Rogers came on board, she did bring a level of professionalism to it that we did not have before that.Bob Gates 1:40:31
Yeah--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:40:31
I don't think this came through from the recommendation, but you know, funding
was--was always a part of that puzzle, find--to find funds, and we did get more school--we had--Buffalo Trace was on board then. We started KDE [Kentucky Department of Education] until we charged school children. We came up with the festival pen, we did that.Sarah Milligan 1:40:53
2005?
Kim Lady Smith 1:40:53
2005, we did not do that in 2000--we were more aggressive about trying to raise
money in 2003, from the site. We really pushed for donations; I remember passing around this bucket.Sarah Milligan 1:41:05
The bucket brigade.
Kim Lady Smith 1:41:06
Yeah, trying to--.
Bob Gates 1:41:07
Which I got from the National Folk Festival or Michigan. We never could get
enough people to do the brigade like they do the at national.Kim Lady Smith 1:41:16
And I think there was more from a programming standpoint, it was more theme
oriented. It was a---I think that was a big discussion. --You know, at the time, you know, how did we use themes, and that was Highway 23. And we did Highway 23--.Sarah Milligan 1:41:31
In 2003--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:41:31
2003.
Bob Gates 1:41:34
Oh, was it? We did it two years in a row, didn't we?
Kim Lady Smith 1:41:36
We did Highway 31, for a couple of years, and then we did 23 for a couple years.
But I remember that--.Bob Gates 1:41:42
Well, we did 23 first.
Kim Lady Smith 1:41:43
--In terms of and then we went to 31, and then you came back--.
Bob Gates 1:41:47
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 1:41:47
--Because you had the---the tour.
Sarah Milligan 1:41:50
The tour was 2005.
Bob Gates 1:41:52
Oh, okay, so we brought it back, now I see.
Kim Lady Smith 1:41:54
Because of the tour.
Sarah Milligan 1:41:56
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 1:41:56
There was a lot of discussion of how to you know, making the programming not
just everything that looked like--seemed like a good idea. Even though that brought us some of the most interesting.Bob Gates 1:42:07
Well, when I was in Louisiana, the idea there had developed into doing themes,
but also having kind of a base of a statewide, what is the Folklife of Louisiana. So, we always had like one Cajun group, a certain kind of Cajun group, we had this and this. --And we had, we had add[ed] on themes that we had--added on to it. And I kind of--we kind of felt like we still had to have---for the people who have never been to it before or people and there's all these students coming in they wanted, they really kind of wanted to see what the folklife of Kentucky was, not just Highway 23. So, we always had this, that's kind of how we develop this idea of the community crossroads area. That this was an introduction that there's a lot of different folk groups, that we all belong to different folk groups and here are taste of really diverse ones that you've never thought of. Like putting a riverboat pilot here, and then Guatemalans here and Indians right next to-- the eastern Indians next to the Guatemalans with the same kind of hand--having an alfombra here and [a] rangoli next to it, being very similar, but very different. You know, so we're looking at how and--then next to that would be the deaf and hard, no--deaf and hard of hearing, yeah. And then we finally had--did the blind one year. So, I think that kind of addressed and then we added to that one year, it was an idea of yours is, I am a Kentuckian.Kim Lady Smith 1:43:36
Yeah, it didn't go over very well. It was--.
Bob Gates 1:43:38
Yeah--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:43:38
--It was a good idea, but--and it was partially-PR oriented, and then the PR
group kind of dropped on--dropped it. The idea was that you'd get this stuff and could put it online and it didn't quite work it out. But that was what the whole festival was about--what is---what a Kentuckian? Who are the Kentuckians, and they're not just the little craft people, the quilters from eastern Kentucky, it's a lot more than that and--. So, you know, we never gave up that message, that was always critical.Bob Gates 1:44:07
You know, in the first or second year, you said that Ricky Skaggs said, "why are
these here," but the newspaper actually did that. The local newspaper wrote an article and said, "why?"Kim Lady Smith 1:44:15
An editorial.
Bob Gates 1:44:16
"Why are these guys here," and it showed the Mexican American group.
Kim Lady Smith 1:44:25
Oh, yeah, that you had the traveling--the wandering group.
Bob Gates 1:44:28
They were--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:44:30
Musicians.
Bob Gates 1:44:31
What is that called? They're a mariachi, it wasn't a full maria--well, it was a
small mariachi band that played on the stage, but we also--.Kim Lady Smith 1:44:40
They strolled the site.
Bob Gates 1:44:41
Yeah, and you know, it was funny--everybody--every other artist we ever booked
here understood the idea of, of being paid a certain amount and then being on stages different times and, and just filling their day up with being on a narrative stage here and doing this and that. They enjoyed it and once they were here, it was hard to--it was hard to tell somebody that they weren't invited the next year, they always thought they should come.Kim Lady Smith 1:45:06
Should just come back.
Bob Gates 1:45:06
They loved--these--they raved about how well we treated them when they were
here. You know, we--they were treated like kings, and that we gave them directions and all this, but they--.Kim Lady Smith 1:45:19
They couldn't figure out how they were getting paid.
Bob Gates 1:45:22
Yeah, well, the mariachi band, you know, I had to negotiate. I didn't speak
Spanish, so I had to negotiate with them, and it was always, they got paid at a restaurant for being there for three hours, and that's how they wanted to be paid here. They wanted to be here for three hours, because they were gonna go someplace else and play. They weren't gonna be here all day. So, we had to figure out how we could use them in three hours or two hours, and that one way was to them on the stage for a little while and then have them stroll, and they were fine with that. It was kind of weird, but the newspaper did come out and say, "why are these people here?" And--.Sarah Milligan 1:45:53
It was an editorial--.
Bob Gates 1:45:54
I thought--
Sarah Milligan 1:45:54
--Not the actual newspaper.
Bob Gates 1:45:55
--That we wrote an editorial back, but I think, somebody pointed out the other
day that it was actually people who supported us wrote letters, and saying, "that’s because---"we helped them out.Kim Lady Smith 1:46:05
And it wasn't completely negative. I remember--they still--Todd Duvall (??) was
doing the editorials then, and always praised it and always praised the Historical Society.Bob Gates 1:46:15
Yeah, but it was--a learning--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:46:16
--It was an issue.
Bob Gates 1:46:17
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 1:46:17
And but that, you know, on one hand, you get angry that they don't get it. On
the other hand, they're asking, that's part of the learning. That's the opportunity.Bob Gates 1:46:24
It was a learning experience, yeah. And the editorials that came after that--the
weeks after that really--.Kim Lady Smith 1:46:29
Letters, you know.
Bob Gates 1:46:29
Yeah, letters. They said these are, and then our message was that "anybody, any
culture that comes here, and is part of Kentucky, is part of Kentucky's traditional culture, and they bring it with them." And so we started doing a lot more with--that one year we had, we had an advisory committee of Latinos, and they met with us at--up in other building, I remember. We had a picture of them on the front steps after the meeting, but—it--it was made up of a representative here of Frankfort, who the represented Mexican American, Claudia, basically and a friend of hers. It was made up of--Cuban-- some Cubans down in Louisville, and Guatemalans from Shelbyville and a couple other groups too. So, we asked, and that's when we were getting---moving more toward this idea, and that was pretty much a trend in folklore, too--from at AFS [American Folklore Society] is that you don't--you don't go out and study these people and just present them. The Smithsonian got in trouble doing that, I think with one---a big exhibit, not this festival, but with an exhibit. So, we were trying to do more of having a advisory committee work with us in--in how they wanted to be presented and what they wanted to say about themselves. And I remember sitting in the meeting with them. So--and we did the same thing with the blind community and some other communities. We would sit down with them and say, you know, "what, would you like people to go away knowing about you after the festival? And what are some of the traditions?" The part about what--what they want them to know was like, "well, we want them to know that we're not all Mexicans. We're all from different a country, all these different cultures." And then the second thing is, well, how are we going to do that? And you know, at first, they want to, they want to dress in old clothes, in their costumes. And they want to do this, just like they've done other places. And we were always trying to say, "well, we want you to talk to people. But we want, we want to have some kind of activity that will draw them in. Some kind of tradition that," and it was really hard for him to think about that. I remember a breakthrough with that group was, we spent like two hours talking with them. And I said, "well, what do you guys do on Saturday nights? What do you do for fun?" They'll said, "well, we go to one another's house in the--Cuban community, and we play drums in one room, and we play dominoes in the other. And lots of times you're playing dominoes and we're tapping to the drums in the other room." I said, "so, you do this every week." He's like, "yeah." I said, "where did that come from?" And so, "well, we do that in Cuba, and we like doing it here." "Well, how about if we set that up in a setting where you could actually do that and let people come up and talk to you." And that was like, almost every group we talked to they [them]--couldn't get around that because they always had in their mind what they wanted to present, but they didn't know how to do it. And that was kind of cool, because that got them involved in it, and then as we went along, they--that's what kind of took more effort in programming as we went along is, when we started working with these groups like the Indians and the Chinese and the Guatemalans, is how do you get them really involved and feeling good about it at the end, that they took part in it? So--.Sarah Milligan 1:49:36
Right.
Bob Gates 1:49:36
That was---that was--I thought that was a major thing. And when we started
doing, we tried to point that out with the VIPs. And I always try to say what--that also led into over the years with the Arts Council is, and actually when I'm retired, I'll still be on their K pin panel and one of the things I've looked forward to doing is working with communities that want--want to do--liven up their festival. Who wanted to make their festival more like their own community, like Mary Breckinridge festival, you go there, and there's nothing about Mary Breckenridge. You know, like the mushroom fest. So, I'm hoping that I still do more of that stuff, and the first thing we always--sit down is the same thing we did with you and the whole group is, "what do we want people to go away learning from this?"Kim Lady Smith 1:50:24
That's right.
Bob Gates 1:50:25
"And how do we--what kind of things do we have to do to get them to do that?"
And does it require this first and then let's assign each and then--Sarah Milligan 1:50:34
So, does it--it require.
Bob Gates 1:50:35
---Stories--.
Sarah Milligan 1:50:36
Essays and journals and then signage? And then--.
Bob Gates 1:50:38
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 1:50:39
--Presentation-- or how does it--.
Bob Gates 1:50:41
I think we learned some things worked and some things didn't.
Kim Lady Smith 1:50:43
Oh, yeah.
Bob Gates 1:50:44
But I've always felt the best part of our festival was people being with the
artists and being presenters of those artists in a subtle way. You know, and they're not there saying, "well, here's Raymond Hicks. You don't--don't say anything. Raymond, I'll talk for you," it was more like, "here's Raymond Hicks. Can I introduce you to him, and let's talk with him." Kind of thing.Sarah Milligan 1:51:06
So, what happened after 2007?
Bob Gates 1:51:10
I don't know. Can we go to the bathroom? Can I go the bathroom? That'd be great. [laughter]
Sarah Milligan 1:51:14
Since you asked permission nicely. Are you hungry?
Kim Lady Smith 1:51:17
Yep.
Sarah Milligan 1:51:18
Alright, so we are back. Okay. So, we were talking about, well, we were kind of
wrapping it up to the sense of. We talked a little bit about 2003, whenever you came back from the first-year hiatus. So--and you had expanded, you changed the site plan a little bit, you'd evaluate--reevaluated your budget. So why is it that you didn't go from back--straight back into an annual scheduled in 2003? Because that was your original plan, I think.Kim Lady Smith 1:51:45
What the recommendation was, is that we would work towards that.
Sarah Milligan 1:51:48
Okay.
Kim Lady Smith 1:51:48
But that we could not fiscally, we still didn't have the fiscal resources to do
it, and to do it right. I mean, you asked how we would go from $100,000 to $250,000. If we were going to keep the festival at the size it was, and we were going to do it right, we were going to get the right signage, we were going to get the right PR, we were going to pay people properly, we were going to have the number of artists. You know, that's what we needed, but we never got there. So--and even though people wanted to do it annually, there was a certain comfort with knowing you had a year off. Because the festival was so exhausting, and intense. So, it was--I don't think we ever really felt this passionate urge to do it every year.Bob Gates 1:52:40
Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, the city kind of put pressure and wanted us to do it
every year.Kim Lady Smith 1:52:45
But they didn't come through.
Bob Gates 1:52:46
Even Kent wanted us [to] do it every year, in terms of making it actually--.
Sarah Milligan 1:52:52
Kent Wentworth?
Bob Gates 1:52:53
Yeah,
Sarah Milligan 1:52:53
Was he here in 2009?
Bob Gates 1:52:54
You know, he said that a couple times, anyway.
Kim Lady Smith 1:52:57
Kent was very supportive the first time.
Bob Gates 1:52:59
But we also felt like we didn't have the people. Like, again, going back to the
Smithsonian, you have all these people doing research, and we didn't have--we were moving toward Community Scholars, and we were presenting their work. But that wasn't strong enough yet, I don't think. And it still requires some--a group to do the programming. I mean, to figure out how it all fits together, even if you got researchers out there, you still--and that took a lot of time.Sarah Milligan 1:53:28
So, what happened to the idea of having a festival manager?
Bob Gates 1:53:31
I don't know.
Kim Lady Smith 1:53:32
Well, I think that was still kind of in the background, and that's something
really Jerry Combs really pushed for that, I recall. But--.Bob Gates 1:53:41
Didn't we hire a couple people to--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:53:43
We hired more people to do work that we relied on staff for.
Bob Gates 1:53:46
Well, we thought they were gonna become a festival--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:53:49
Yeah, but it just--I don't think we got there. I mean, keep in mind, we only had
three more festivals after we made that decision. And in 2005, after 2005, budgets were cut on a yearly basis. So, you know, coming up with the resources we needed was pretty, pretty hard to do. And I just, like I said, I don't think it became a priority, even though we wanted to. I think there was this realization. Now, the 2005 festival was very expensive. We spent some money, and I know there's some people who think that we overspent more than we did, we didn't. There were some issues where money that we raised did not get put into the right accounts. expenses were not charged against it. All kinds of craziness, but--but we did have a lot of money. The Arts Council kept giving us more and more money, and we had over $200,000 for that event.Bob Gates 1:55:00
--I just want to say that I thought that was a lot of money, but also when I was
looking at what the Michigan Folk Festival was doing before--years before they were over $400,000, and they were still on the grounds of the campus. I mean, they had a big budget, and I always thought we were were--.Kim Lady Smith 1:55:22
We were low--.
Bob Gates 1:55:23
--We were a bargain basement, in terms of what we were doing--producing for that
amount of money. So, I know you--I felt like I overspent later on, but I also felt like--.Kim Lady Smith 1:55:34
There was always--.
Bob Gates 1:55:35
--The problem was we didn't---we didn't set a budget and say, "we're not going
over this." We just kind of--.Kim Lady Smith 1:55:39
Well, we did but then I remember in 2005, Laurie saying, "well, I can give you
more." I thought, "okay, now we can spend more." But--and she did, but again, you know, I retired before the end of the fiscal year.Sarah Milligan 1:55:52
That's right.
Kim Lady Smith 1:55:52
Never got a report on festival finances, and knew that we had overspent in
certain areas, but I did not think it was going to be that big, of an. As much as I have heard since that we overspent. Bob spent more on artists than we planned, we spent more on the Skaggs concert than, you know, we had anticipated. And there's always things that come in that you--that you think are certain expense, and then by the time they come in, for whatever reasons, they're more. But it wasn't huge, but we were charging the school children. And we never got that money to apply. And we never knew how much we raised on the festival pins. We never had the money from the gift shop or any of those donations available. So--and by then we were spending out the outside account, starting to put the money more just into the state. So, it was just convoluted, and part of the problem, too was the fiscal, we had the festival, and then the fiscal office would go immediately into preparing a budget, which is an intense amount of work. So, it was very easy for things to get shoved aside. And all that--.Bob Gates 1:57:09
You mean because of the time of year, you got--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:57:10
Timing. It was timing.
Sarah Milligan 1:57:11
--And leading up to the biennium.
Kim Lady Smith 1:57:13
Right, you had to have the budget turned in by a certain time and the budget for
the agency is huge and time consuming. So, a lot of things get pushed aside, and we'll deal with that later.Sarah Milligan 1:57:21
Right.
Kim Lady Smith 1:57:22
So, it was--it was an accounting nightmare, in many ways, but--but it was still
manageable. I mean, we still had--I think the money was still found, and it wasn't that we were irresponsible. We knew we went over budget in a couple of areas, but that was not unusual.Bob Gates 1:57:43
Yeah, at one point, when (??) was here, it was promise that it would be a Toyota
festival. I mean that Toyota would put--Kim Lady Smith 1:57:54
Yeah.
Bob Gates 1:57:54
--A million dollars in toward it. And all of a sudden that was pulled, you know,
"no, we can't do that."Kim Lady Smith 1:57:58
We didn't get that money.
Bob Gates 1:57:59
So, there was--there was a lot of this fundraising where we, if we had a
consistent--way a fundraising. We weren't good at it, but--I had been better at it in Louisiana than I was here, because I got pretty good funding down there, but here it was, like--.Kim Lady Smith 1:58:14
Well, we ended up--.
Bob Gates 1:58:15
--Were always bumped up against what the Historical Society needed.
Kim Lady Smith 1:58:18
We were getting money--.
Bob Gates 1:58:19
The center.
Kim Lady Smith 1:58:19
--From the [KHS Foundation] foundation. The foundation was matching part of the
money. So, that was helping, once the foundation kicked in. So, you know, we had a decent budget going in, and then a lot of it depended on what the Arts Council could put towards it.Sarah Milligan 1:58:32
Right.
Kim Lady Smith 1:58:34
Losing the Department of Education money was sad, $15,000, but we couldn't ask
them to underwrite the education program that we were charging the school kids for. But we had started charging to the history center for school children. And so, you couldn't not--.Sarah Milligan 1:58:50
Right--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:58:50
--Charge them if they were come to the history center that day.
Bob Gates 1:58:52
I think we could have.
Kim Lady Smith 1:58:53
Well, anyway, we didn't think.
Bob Gates 1:58:55
Vicki didn't want figure--.
Kim Lady Smith 1:58:56
No, that wasn't Vicki.
Bob Gates 1:58:57
Okay.
Kim Lady Smith 1:58:58
Vicki didn't want us to charge the schoolchildren at all, that was an issue.
Sarah Milligan 1:59:01
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 1:59:01
It was, so anyways, 2005 was kind of a transitional year in a lot of ways. You
know, Kent came on board, he was very supportive of it. We worked hard, Alice Rogers did a great job with PR. We made some go advances there. The Skaggs concert was one of the largest attendance[s] we've ever had. The city was thrilled. It was a good event, but you know, again, if you if you look at, you'd asked before we left, you know, what happened in 2007. I wasn't here, but I do know, just in general, the economy's tanking and the resources aren't going to be there. I know there are a lot of other issues, I'm sure that came into play, but by the time you would have got to 2009, it's just not a realistic thing. And you get-- reach a point in state government, where if the state government is seen as putting on--spending two hundred and something thousand on that at the time of budget cuts is not exactly---.Bob Gates 2:00:03
--And that's that's--.
Kim Lady Smith 2:00:05
--Thought well upon.
Bob Gates 2:00:05
Yeah, that was a discussion with Kent and Laurie, about putting it off for at
least two years. And then we actually--I actually had him talked into doing it again, this year, 2011. We got a grant from, from NEA for $50,000. That we were going to move toward the fest--we were going to do the festival in 2011, did you know that?Sarah Milligan 2:00:27
I did.
Bob Gates 2:00:28
Oh, okay. Well, and then the Congress couldn't pass a budget. So, NEA couldn't
tell us that we actually had the money. So, in April of last year, that's when, or maybe a little bit before that, when we needed to know that we had the money to go ahead, we couldn't and that's when they put--pulled the plug on it.Kim Lady Smith 2:00:48
You all something though, what in 2010? You had something you--.
Bob Gates 2:00:53
Oh, it was two years in a row we did that.
Kim Lady Smith 2:00:55
Something small.
Sarah Milligan 2:00:56
It was the luthier--the Made to be Played concert.
Bob Gates 2:00:59
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 2:01:00
You did--you did a full day.
Bob Gates 2:01:03
Outside and it rained.
Sarah Milligan 2:01:05
Yeah. It was awful weather. Yeah, did a full day and then--.
Kim Lady Smith 2:01:09
Had the headhunters that night.
Sarah Milligan 2:01:10
Yes.
Bob Gates 2:01:11
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 2:01:13
That was a small thing.
Bob Gates 2:01:14
That was two years ago, that was just to keep a presence out in the ground so
that people would see us coming back the next year, or hopefully, next year.Sarah Milligan 2:01:22
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:01:22
So, the money that we had the $50,000--that we have right now is being used
to--As we Tour the Masters exhibit, we're doing out--doing concerts with--in each place.Kim Lady Smith 2:01:35
But you also in the budget cuts, lost $25,000 for the festival.
Bob Gates 2:01:40
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 2:01:40
That's a lot of money.
Kim Lady Smith 2:01:41
Lost (??) that money. So, you know, there's it's hard to to replace those. And
the every other year advantage of when you had the $25,000 a year allocation was then you had 50. Abd then the foundation would match that, so you had 100.Sarah Milligan 2:01:55
--And that--.
Kim Lady Smith 2:01:55
--So, you were--you know, we were pretty--.
Bob Gates 2:01:57
And then the Arts Council put like $60,00 in there.
Kim Lady Smith 2:02:01
Yeah, so, we were okay.
Bob Gates 2:02:04
I always thought the foundation's money coming in was kind of justification for
the fact that we didn't go out and fundraise. That the money coming in the foundation was from their general fundraising. So--it's how we got our money for the festival and wasn't stealing from them.Kim Lady Smith 2:02:23
No----no.
Bob Gates 2:02:23
The Foundation. It was--
Kim Lady Smith 2:02:24
That was part of what they did.
Bob Gates 2:02:25
Yeah, if we would have been able to go out and actually get big sponsors like
other festivals did--.Kim Lady Smith 2:02:32
It came out of the annual (??)
Bob Gates 2:02:33
--Didn't pull away from the history center. So, it was kind of a--
Kim Lady Smith 2:02:36
And that was Kevin--Kevin supported (??)--supported the festival, and he knew
fundraising was an issue. So, you know, he supported and recommended that the foundation board support it. So, you know, money wasn't as much of an issue in all those years. I have say [said] 2005 was kind of weird, because we thought we had more money than we apparently did. Even with our--.Bob Gates 2:03:00
And we were extra careful that year, too.
Kim Lady Smith 2:03:03
Well, in 2007---.
Sarah Milligan 2:03:03
2007--.
Kim Lady Smith 2:03:04
--I think you were very careful because there was the sense that we had over
done, for whatever reasons. So, you know, so I think financially and programmatically plus, the loss of staff. You know, the Arts Council struggles, this is a tough time to put on an event like this. And if--you know, if you could bring it back, that'd be great, but I don't know that you could bring back what we did, or that you should. Maybe these times are different.Bob Gates 2:03:35
Yeah, I mean, some face it--a lot of festivals that were state festivals
happened because the Smithsonian started-- brought them to Washington, like Iowa, I think it was, was that Iowa? They were there at the Smithsonian for two years, maybe, and then they--the state said, "wow, this is great. Let's take this back and do a state festival." Well, even that festival is only a one-day festival. So there's a lot of these festivals that weren't as big as ours, tried to do what we did.Sarah Milligan 2:04:07
Well, and looking at the nationals. Those are three days.
Bob Gates 2:04:10
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 2:04:10
At the National Folk Festival.
Bob Gates 2:04:11
The national's all and you know that that went in the Michigan and kind of
changed their festival a whole lot by-- by bringing in by---. They paired there, instead of doing their state festival, they paired it with the national festival for three years. And to me it kind of well--.Sarah Milligan 2:04:34
Did you ever consider doing that in Kentucky?
Bob Gates 2:04:37
We never, no--we did a little bit, but what I saw--and I had been--I worked at
the national festival in Chattanooga, with Roby Cogswell. When they had it there and I worked another place with them. I guess my beef was it's--it was world--it was music. All the music was from outside of the state, usually. It didn't really have anything do with--and so it would have change what we were doing drastically. And even when they--you in Chattanooga, Roby Caldwell's director, there--the arts council had a push to have craftsmen from Chattanooga area and Tennessee, but that kind of went out even in Michigan when I observed it a couple years later, they it was very small. It was more like a crafts marketing thing where only certain people were invited, and it wasn't really demonstrating, it was more just selling. So, I kind of felt like it would change our festival completely. And ours--I think ours as always strong because it was--our headliners were always Kentuckians.Sarah Milligan 2:05:42
Kentuckians.
Bob Gates 2:05:42
--Our other stages were, and most of the people who were on the day stages could
have--could have done a night stage, I think. You know and did them well.Kim Lady Smith 2:05:52
One thing I want to point out, you know, again, I wasn't here in 2007, but the
work he did with K State was--for that festival, was really excellent. And I think that was also one of the strengths of the festival for the agencies is that it helped us collaborate with people we didn't normally collaborate with. And so it broadened you know, our perspective and their perspective and our network of support in general, by working with these new interesting groups.Bob Gates 2:06:22
That was the most fun field work ever did for a.
Sarah Milligan 2:06:25
The K State Homecoming?
Bob Gates 2:06:27
Yeah, it was Sheila Burton Mason, we hit every party we could [laughs]. We
did--the--I mean, it was great.Sarah Milligan 2:06:34
Video camera in hand.
Bob Gates 2:06:36
Yeah--I mean, I learned a lot, and I felt like they got a lot out of it.
Kim Lady Smith 2:06:42
Yeah, they did. They seemed to appreciate it. It took us a few years to get that
to happen, because we had talked about that for quite some time.Sarah Milligan 2:06:50
Yeah, for the 2005. I remember that was (??).
Bob Gates 2:06:52
Yeah, that's another big organization you go to and say, "you want--we want to
present you as a folk--at our folk festival?" Well, first it's Black college, and "what do you mean by folk--with Black?" You know, I mean, I think they didn't really, folk doesn't really mean the same thing, sometimes. It's kind of an old timey thing, and you have to get through all of that stuff. And then the idea that we're just present, we're not really presenting the whole history of K State, is what they wanted to do. And we had to talk to them and say, "well, wheat we're presenting is the--your homecoming, and what that means for the state." And that was a hard message to get through. And, but it worked.Kim Lady Smith 2:07:31
And that was a great program.
Bob Gates 2:07:34
Sarah--Sheila Burton Mason, and what's her name?
Sarah Milligan 2:07:37
Anne Butler.
Bob Gates 2:07:38
Anne Butler, and it was great working with them.
Sarah Milligan 2:07:41
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:07:42
We still need to recover some of the video--we did a whole series of interviews
one day with K State people on campus, aside from the ones I did with my camera, and I don't think we've ever gotten those back--we've ever gotten those, and I don't think they're using them either. They were put on hard disk, and the guy left, and it's--I keep--well, we'll find them, we'll get them.Sarah Milligan 2:08:07
It sounds like a job for you.
Kim Lady Smith 2:08:10
I did remember one thing we did, that we gave up after our--well we did it in
2002, we didn't do it in 2005. Remember when we gave up the barbecuers people were so upset with us when we didn't bring the Owensboro barbecuers.Sarah Milligan 2:08:24
I actually think that was my mistake. It was after Bob--.
Kim Lady Smith 2:08:29
A mistake?
Sarah Milligan 2:08:30
Well, to not bring them back.
Kim Lady Smith 2:08:31
Well, we didn't want them.
Sarah Milligan 2:08:33
We didn't?
Kim Lady Smith 2:08:33
No.
Bob Gates 2:08:33
No.
Sarah Milligan 2:08:34
Now I feel better.
Bob Gates 2:08:35
(??) didn't want--didn't like us paying them, giving them rooms and--.
Kim Lady Smith 2:08:39
They had--the year before, they had been difficult. We wanted them to--we ran
out of rooms at the hotel, and they refuse to go to the Hampton, or this other hotel. And, and they were expensive, because they bought so many people. So, we didn't bring them back, and we brought out the barbecuers and people--people loved the Owensboro barbecue. So, it was kind of a mixed--mixed thing, but you know, but that was--as was Bob said earlier, people expected to come, people plan this. You know, I remember we had Gibby's Restaurant on the grounds, a couple of years. And then we told him, "no," we weren't going to keep having him. And he was just so hurt because his family would come in, they'd get the ice cream. You know, it was a big party for them. You know, and they worked hard, and he was--people did tend to feel sort of--they almost claimed an ownership--and so then, it was very hard to not insult someone when you did program changes.Bob Gates 2:09:43
Yeah. And so, I--we'd try to balance that out by including them in other
programs during the summer and during the rest of the year. We had the Craft Market and this and that. There's always this competition between Eddie Pennington and Steve Richter--Rector, you know. Who they both came in as friends, but how do you--which one do you do this year kind of thing? Rick, what's his name? Willie Rascoe. We were doing a Community Scholar training in--in--Paducah.Sarah Milligan 2:10:11
Paducah.
Bob Gates 2:10:12
--And he came to an African American program. I didn't even recognize them, and
then he said, "I'm Willie Rascoe." I said, "hey Willie, how [are] you doing?" He was so mad at me because we had stopped bringing him to the festival. Just because we did program changes, he had done it twice in a row or something like that. That was the only person I knew who really took it that--that far. Most people just really wanted--really enjoyed coming.Sarah Milligan 2:10:36
I always wondered that, but you know, whenever, whenever I started working with
the festival, that was one of the questions I think I had was too, it's--and at that point, you've got almost ten years of programming behind you. And that--that was one of those constant discussions. Well, that may not fit with the theme we're looking at, but how could we not have this person.Kim Lady Smith 2:11:01
And then the basket makers were an issue. Because we did 31-W for a while and
the basket makers, and they always wanted to bring a lot of people--.Sarah Milligan 2:11:08
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 2:11:08
--And it was hard to say no.
Bob Gates 2:11:09
I remember it was great that one time we had the big tent with them in it, but
you're right after that, it was like, how do we put them in there?Sarah Milligan 2:11:15
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:11:16
Well, I think that's--we were moving toward that free theme. The last two
festivals was [were] about, like the Smithsonian, you had this theme, this theme. But we also were, I think our last idea was to actually look at our region. I mean, I a count, where we had done some. We had thematic things like Highway 23, because we did research there and--.Sarah Milligan 2:11:41
Right.
Kim Lady Smith 2:11:41
And Highway 31.
Bob Gates 2:11:42
Highway 31, yeah.
Sarah Milligan 2:11:46
Do you feel like you ever actually got there, where people could tell there were
like, actual themes you were presenting that year?Bob Gates 2:11:52
Yeah, I think so. I think because we had Western Kentucky students go around and
do surveys with people.Sarah Milligan 2:12:01
Oh, yes, I had to do those.
Bob Gates 2:12:02
Yeah, and one of the questions I wanted to ask is, what did you--what did you
learn about this state or what--what is folk like to you now and things like that. And some, you know, we got quite a few that said, "oh, well, I see this. I understand that." And they were getting it, but I always thought our signage could be better.Kim Lady Smith 2:12:24
Yeah, the signage was always a hassle.
Bob Gates 2:12:25
It could be you know, you go in you go in Disneyland, and you know what area
you're in, by the big sign.Sarah Milligan 2:12:32
Tomorrowland. [laughter]
Bob Gates 2:12:33
Tomorrowland, and you see this, and you see that. It was--we were never able to
pull off the big signs like the Smithsonian did, that really marked off the area. We were moving toward actually having color-coded areas, so you knew what themes were in that area. That was the hardest part, but I think, you know, and there was some discussion when new people came on graphics design. They didn't like the graphic design that other people had done for our signs earlier. And the signs aren't as good as those signs. So, you had--.Kim Lady Smith 2:13:11
Oh, yeah, that was--.
Sarah Milligan 2:13:12
The first one.
Bob Gates 2:13:14
Oh, yeah that [laughs]
Sarah Milligan 2:13:15
The clipart?
Bob Gates 2:13:16
No, I'm talking about like our signage that we actually had next to the tents.
Sarah Milligan 2:13:20
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:13:20
You know, and the mean greens. Some people hate the mean greens--other people--I
mean, people borrow them from us all the time.Sarah Milligan 2:13:27
We didn't do the mean greens until 2005.
Bob Gates 2:13:29
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 2:13:30
Or 2007, maybe?
Bob Gates 2:13:31
No, that was earlier that wasn't it.
Kim Lady Smith 2:13:33
I think we were switching something in 2005.
Sarah Milligan 2:13:35
No, yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 2:13:36
But I don't remember details.
Sarah Milligan 2:13:37
Yes, it was the--.
Bob Gates 2:13:37
Oh, that was David, because he built all those things.
Kim Lady Smith 2:13:39
But you notice how we learned? I mean, look at the difference between the
artwork. [laughs]Sarah Milligan 2:13:43
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 2:13:44
And so--we could be taught--we did try to [laughter] take what we learned and do
a better job with things.Bob Gates 2:13:51
We used that for the t--shirt--two years in a row, though, didn't we?
Kim Lady Smith 2:13:53
By mistake.
Sarah Milligan 2:13:54
The first one?
Kim Lady Smith 2:13:55
Well, the first one, we had this on a T-shirt, Fruit of the Loom gave it to us.
You know, it was one of those in-kind contributions we got. The next year, we did the same thing but with a different color background and it came in [laughter] Yeah, it wasn't supposed to be. And that came in green, but we couldn't have the same T-shirt as the year before. So, we ended up with over 1,000 more of these in this green and--and then the pink, which was horrible. But--so, yeah, those--those things changed after that. We had some nice T-shirts after that. But back to the whole thing, with signage. That was again where money could have helped us a lot, and we always ran into a problem where last-minute programming where we--then you had to do--you couldn't do the signage till you had the programming. You could do some and it was a hassle. I think it was always, I'm remember even putting them up, sometimes we'd find signs that we hadn't even gotten out.Bob Gates 2:14:54
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 2:14:55
So--
Bob Gates 2:14:58
Yeah, we had a lot of help from Kim's Signs in the beginning.
Kim Lady Smith 2:15:01
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:15:02
Because he would walk the site with us and say, "yeah, from our--from my sign
maker's perspective, I would like to see something over there that tells you about this." And that's why we developed these big signs that were on the hillside. Like where the river area was. And there's you know--.Kim Lady Smith 2:15:20
--They'd be, they'd be in the middle of the festival, you know, the first or
second day and say, "Kim, can you make the signs." We'd pick it up the next day because something wasn't working--.Bob Gates 2:15:28
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 2:15:28
---Our parking signs were always an issue and, yeah.
Bob Gates 2:15:31
Well, they started being---being signs with Sentra--with pictures actually
mounted to them and, and vinyl lettering, that's expensive. And it's hard to change. But when we got into the computer-generated signs, they were a lot easier. And we didn't need his help anymore, [laughs] as much. But he was really helpful in the beginning because he walked the site with us. We also had a--.Kim Lady Smith 2:15:57
Accessibility person--.
Bob Gates 2:15:58
--Accessibility person walked the site with us and say, "how can we make this a
little bit easier to get to--and--."Sarah Milligan 2:16:03
Right.
Bob Gates 2:16:04
--How do we--.
Kim Lady Smith 2:16:04
And the city kept not wanting to give us shuttles because they never had enough,
they thought on--finally, it boiled down to Saturday to shuttle people. And part of that reason was disability. The shuttles had the handicap access, could manage wheelchairs, and so it didn't--I gave them my radio and they liked that better. So, they could--we could radio them when people needed them--.Sarah Milligan 2:16:24
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 2:16:24
--Versus just a--shot--just a circle all the time.
Bob Gates 2:16:27
And started doing the thing with the tractors--.
Kim Lady Smith 2:16:28
They did the tractors.
Bob Gates 2:16:29
--Pretty early--we saw down at the--when we would go down to--.
Kim Lady Smith 2:16:34
The state fair.
Sarah Milligan 2:16:34
Oh, the people movers.
Bob Gates 2:16:35
The state fair.
Sarah Milligan 2:16:36
Right.
Bob Gates 2:16:36
And so, we got to deal with the state fair that they would let us borrow that,
and we had to talk transportation into go picking them up and had--.Kim Lady Smith 2:16:43
And that was easy.
Bob Gates 2:16:44
--Had to find guys at transportation who would ride--ride the tractors around.
And we wanted to have this--that was our link to the river. And so, the city said, "yeah, we'll put in a sidewalk all the way through." Well, they did, almost to where the walls were--it's at to where--the--that railroad bridge was. And then it became a single one. And it was hard for the--we had to---we had to figure out if the tractor's stack would fit underneath the railroad bridge because that could--.Sarah Milligan 2:17:20
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:17:21
--And that all worked, everything. And now the city's actually got a doubling
path all the way through it. It's perfect now, and the city also has a, what do you call it?Kim Lady Smith 2:17:31
The trolley.
Bob Gates 2:17:32
Well, they have the trolley, but they have a performance area--.
Kim Lady Smith 2:17:35
Oh, right.
Bob Gates 2:17:35
--On the river now, right where we wanted it--I mean, right in that area.
Sarah Milligan 2:17:39
Well, and not to mention all the things that you all worked out with the Dry
Stone Conservatory.Kim Lady Smith 2:17:43
Oh, yeah, those are--beautiful things down there.
Sarah Milligan 2:17:45
Built the site down there, yeah.
Bob Gates 2:17:47
And we actually, and yeah, a couple years ago, we got the city to write a grant,
to do signage down there. And Chris Harp was--helped get that through. I mean, he wrote the grant. And so, my, you know, we first got him to do one down there, and the city paid for that. And then we got another one. And it was always kind of, "oh, they're going to come down and do it and the city's going to pay for it. We have to go down and help them decide what we're going to--where we're going to do it--what we're gonna make it." And our idea was always this could be a museum of stone fence. So, every year, it was a different design, different style.Sarah Milligan 2:18:22
Right.
Bob Gates 2:18:22
And it still is I still think---.
Kim Lady Smith 2:18:24
Working at conservation (??).
Bob Gates 2:18:24
--The city could play that up more. But--.
Sarah Milligan 2:18:28
Well, yeah, well, yeah, there's--I think there's a lot of lingering things that
you can kind of see.Bob Gates 2:18:33
Well, I mean, you could go to the Holiday Inn and stay there, and they could
give you a little brochure that says, "walk the--go across the street and see the stone fences. This is a museum." I mean, the best one there is that--.Sarah Milligan 2:18:46
The bridge.
Bob Gates 2:18:46
That little bridge, and it's great. And now there's--now the city's got a path
that goes all the way out. So it's, I'm really proud of that, that we started that and got that--got to them to--a tangible item. That--it's still there, I guess.Sarah Milligan 2:19:02
There you go. You should go put little Folklife Festival stickers on top. [laughs]
Bob Gates 2:19:07
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 2:19:08
Okay. So that--I think that brings us up to 2007, where we really--which was the
last festival that was held. And at this point, I mean, obviously we're in a similar state as in 2009. Where financially, you know, we haven't--the state hasn't recovered. Officially, the state hasn't recovered enough to even think about funding. And--.Bob Gates 2:19:31
Well, I mean, we were actually going to do it, 2011.
Sarah Milligan 2:19:35
Were you gonna do it with a $50,000 one or you know--.
Bob Gates 2:19:38
No--
Sarah Milligan 2:19:38
--Or with your $200,500 one?
Bob Gates 2:19:39
No, were dropping in the river. Kent wanted us to make the footprint smaller.
So, we were gonna drop the river this year and have three distinct themes, themes. We hadn't really--kind of doing. But we were gonna--yeah, it was going to be smaller. But I think it was still going to be at least $100,000.Kim Lady Smith 2:20:02
I would probably think so.
Bob Gates 2:20:03
Yeah, because even cutting, you know, cutting those things down didn't---doesn't
change the budget all that much.Kim Lady Smith 2:20:11
No, the space wasn't expensive. The number of stages was, but even then, because
we looked at that. I mean, you cut out so many tents and you cut out---if you move your artists just to a different location, the river was never the most expensive piece of the festival.Sarah Milligan 2:20:27
Right.
Kim Lady Smith 2:20:27
So, not having the river didn't save us a lot of money.
Sarah Milligan 2:20:30
Well--.
Kim Lady Smith 2:20:30
And the river was something the city wanted.
Sarah Milligan 2:20:32
Right.
Kim Lady Smith 2:20:33
So that was--.
Sarah Milligan 2:20:33
But you had to program it.
Kim Lady Smith 2:20:35
You had program it, but there was very little programming that was specific to
the river that was particularly costly.Bob Gates 2:20:42
I mean, it was like you'd have them perform up here and you'd have them perform
down there and perform back up there again. So--.Sarah Milligan 2:20:48
By 2007, because I remember, I did sound for that. We had like seven stages--.
Kim Lady Smith 2:20:53
All the way down the river?
Sarah Milligan 2:20:54
No all---totals like---like, I don't even think that includes the big one.
Bob Gates 2:21:00
The foodways, the Narrative Stage, the--.
Sarah Milligan 2:21:02
St. Clair, the Narrative Stage, Foodways, Community Crossroads, river--I think
there was river, farmers market. I mean, it was, there was a lot--there was a lot going on.Bob Gates 2:21:14
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 2:21:16
We always had-- [sighs]
Bob Gates 2:21:19
Too much? Say it. [laughter]
Kim Lady Smith 2:21:21
Well, we never had the audience, except for when the schoolchildren were there,
that kept all sites busy. But when the schoolchildren were there, you needed all the sites. You know--you--even 5,000, but when we had 10,000 school kids, if you could not separate them, if you--.Sarah Milligan 2:21:42
Right.
Kim Lady Smith 2:21:43
--Didn't have the river, it wasn't gonna work.
Sarah Milligan 2:21:46
And that's true.
Kim Lady Smith 2:21:46
And that was part of the dilemma is--more people said, "you're having two
different folklife festivals and you're trying to make them one."Bob Gates 2:21:53
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 2:21:54
And that was challenging. That was a challenge, but in particular, because most
people would say, not the tourism folks, but those of us who looked at the mission would say, "it's the school groups that we are really having the impact with." To Laurie, that was always the most important piece. You know, it's--.Bob Gates 2:22:13
But our night cultures drew a lot of people, and--it's just--.
Kim Lady Smith 2:22:16
--And that's--the city loved those---.
Bob Gates 2:22:18
And our Saturday was pretty good, but not as good as it should have been, I agree.
Kim Lady Smith 2:22:23
And--that--that's just hard. And that's---that's part of what Frankfort
struggles with, you know. So, it was not unprecedented.Bob Gates 2:22:32
But if it had been [an] every year festival, I think the word of mouth would
have made it a good.Kim Lady Smith 2:22:38
It had the potential to work.
Bob Gates 2:22:39
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 2:22:40
It had the potential to--to justify its size and its expense pretty easily. We
never really quite got that, came close a few years. 2005 was actually a pretty well-attended overall event.Bob Gates 2:22:57
Yeah, we you know, we had the state workers down there and--.
Kim Lady Smith 2:23:00
And 2007.
Bob Gates 2:23:01
--Blended into the night concerts and Saturday was good.
Kim Lady Smith 2:23:05
So, I mean, and that just goes with the flow, and that just--every festival goes
through those kinds of growing pains.Bob Gates 2:23:13
We avoided rain pretty often.
Kim Lady Smith 2:23:15
We did.
Bob Gates 2:23:15
Yeah, the one time we had on the plaza area, Michael Ann [Williams], and I think
it might have been the first festival or the second festival, where we had Larry Hackley, who was a--you know---Larry is.Sarah Milligan 2:23:28
Art (??)
Bob Gates 2:23:29
He's an art dealer, but he'd actually done a lot of research with these guys and
went to their houses and he's a great guy. Anyway, he worked with a lot of, what do you call it, outsider art.Sarah Milligan 2:23:43
Is he with the Folk Art Museum in Morehead?
Bob Gates 2:23:45
He kind of helped them get started, but he was always independent.
Sarah Milligan 2:23:48
Okay.
Bob Gates 2:23:49
And he started his own gallery a couple years ago. But he and his assistant came
and worked with us and did a outside art--not as outsider artists but--art outside the house when--.Kim Lady Smith 2:24:02
I think that was the second year.
Bob Gates 2:24:04
Yeah, well see, she writes about in this one. "Art and Every day." Well, maybe
she doesn't maybe there's a second year. Anyway, we had [cough] bathtub Madonnas out there. We had this guy from--Middlesboro, Kentucky who had it put all these 'Get Right with God,' crosses up. We had his estate, it helped us get this one thing he had put across the whole ravine down there and it was 'Get right with God,' I think it was or 'God is coming.' I can't remember what it was. So, we hung that up, and that all plays---out on the greenish area was all for this stuff. Great stuff.Sarah Milligan 2:24:44
So, did people understand you weren't proselytizing? [laughter]
Bob Gates 2:24:47
I think so, but I remember after the concert, I think it was--who's the guy you
liked so much?Kim Lady Smith 2:24:53
Sam Bush.
Bob Gates 2:24:54
Sam Bush. He just finished and then we heard the thunder is coming and everybody
was heading home. And I was trying to batten down things. And I remember--.Kim Lady Smith 2:25:03
Yeah.
Bob Gates 2:25:03
--Going out in the Plaza and it's raining like crazy, and as I get there, this
lightning strikes really bright. And it says, 'Get Right with God,' [laughter] there's a message there. [laughter]Kim Lady Smith 2:25:18
Yeah, I remember that night concert because that was another one of those
instances where the staff really comes through because you know, Sam Bush won't quit playing.Bob Gates 2:25:25
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 2:25:25
And it's lightning. And, um, you know, right there with the sound, guys, "we
need to stop this concert." And he's, he could tell me how far the lightning was away you know, he had all this stuff. And finally, they stop. You know, but beforehand, I realized, this is getting bad. And so, I get on the radio, and there's not many people left--staff at their watch.Sarah Milligan 2:25:44
Right.
Kim Lady Smith 2:25:45
And I said, "we need to secure the site. You know, anybody here the radio, we
need to secure the site." And everybody, that was in the society and the Arts Council got up, you know, whether they would there with radios, you know, the word was getting through, and went out and moved those garbage cans into tents and made sure the tents were secure. You know, it was just, and I remember Mike Hudson and I were helping load the bus. And we got the last drum on the bus, Sam Bush--when it just a--down poured.Bob Gates 2:26:16
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 2:26:18
It was just a terrible storm, actually. But we never had storms during the day,
we had wind issues. We had to close a tent one year because it wasn't secure enough on the Plaza, and the wind was about to blow it down. So, we moved the artists to the front of tent [laughs] and had people sit outside. And we had a few things like that. But--but we never had that, that wash out that you always worry about.Bob Gates 2:26:44
We always had this thing where the Saturday night concert was so big, that we
had to get the chairs from down the river up to the--.Kim Lady Smith 2:26:52
I remember that.
Bob Gates 2:26:52
--Up there. So, we had this [chuckles] brigade that always would help us unload
them on one side of the stone fence and the other group inside bringing them in and setting them up and--.Sarah Milligan 2:27:01
And that's legendary with staff. Oh, yeah.
Bob Gates 2:27:04
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 2:27:04
That's--that's the I think one thing that people, the staff here, that have been
through a festival, they say, "I'm never moving another chair from Bob Gates as long as I live." [laughter] But in a fond way, you know, I think that's kind of one of those things that you--as you all were talking about, it's just one of the things people know, they after doing it so many, times they just knew---we know we've got to be at this point because someone's got to move the chairs over to the Gators and get them up to the--.Bob Gates 2:27:28
Well, there are things like during the festival that--.
Sarah Milligan 2:27:30
Main stage.
Bob Gates 2:27:31
--Happen[ed] rea[ly]l nice and calmly that you can--you're in your area, you do
this and the schedule, but then when it gets to be around five o'clock, and you're switching from the day to the--.Kim Lady Smith 2:27:43
For the night--.
Bob Gates 2:27:44
--Night, there's a lot of things that we kind of just--you have to do right away and--.
Kim Lady Smith 2:27:49
Like I said--.
Bob Gates 2:27:50
There's no way around it.
Kim Lady Smith 2:27:51
--Physically, it's hard. None of our staff works, physical labor, and to work at
the festival. To get there at five o'clock in the morning and not leave till 11 o'clock at night, constantly on your feet.Sarah Milligan 2:28:05
Right.
Kim Lady Smith 2:28:05
Yeah, I remember I lost six pounds the first festival. You know--it was you
know, you'd get a sandwich, and you couldn't eat it, because you'd have to go deal with something else. And you were constantly moving. It's hard--.Bob Gates 2:28:17
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 2:28:18
--I mean it's physically--.
Bob Gates 2:28:19
And then some--.
Kim Lady Smith 2:28:19
Hard.
Bob Gates 2:28:19
--I remember we had to meet the TV people one morning at four--five o'clock in
the morning when the barbecue people started their fire.Kim Lady Smith 2:28:28
Yeah
Bob Gates 2:28:29
---That was the event.
Kim Lady Smith 2:28:30
They were putting on it TV, so you know, you were just always on.
Bob Gates 2:28:35
I was bringing a boat over one--one time early in the morning. It was
Stumpjumper, that thing's heavy. I think it was a Stumpjumper and I was--I was driving out of my--and it was over my yard, because I guess it was my Stumpjumper that and I was using it for the festival--for Dale Calhoun. And I was driving out and it wasn't tied down. It got loose and it fell right off the back of [laughs] the trailer, right at the intersection of what's--that called--.Sarah Milligan 2:29:06
Wilkinson--.
Bob Gates 2:29:07
--Coming down my st--the one coming down from the big hill.
Sarah Milligan 2:29:12
Oh. [U.S.] 127? Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 2:29:14
Yeah, 127.
Bob Gates 2:29:15
Right at that intersection here, and somebody was behind me, and he helped me
lift it up. And you know, I'm not very strong, and we were pulling this thing up trying to get it tightened on there. And I gotta get over there because Kim's gonna meet with this guy. And we got [laughs], it was those times it was--it was crazy.Kim Lady Smith 2:29:30
I always remember, we would try to send Bob out you know, to do radio programs
during the festival, which was ridiculous and Russ Hatter (??) had a program and someone called me on the radio saying, "Russ Hatter's on the radio saying Bob Gates, where are you?" Because he was supposed to be on the show.Bob Gates 2:29:52
Well, that--.
Kim Lady Smith 2:29:52
At that time--
Bob Gates 2:29:53
--Was actually after I was down. That was not during the festival, but it was
before the festival, and we were doing a training thing.Kim Lady Smith 2:29:59
Okay. Well, I thought it was--.
Bob Gates 2:30:00
I was with the staff, and I forgot that was supposed to be up there, too.
Sarah Milligan 2:30:04
That was before you had a PDA, I'm sure. Before you got your Palm Pilot to
electronically tell you. [laughs]Kim Lady Smith 2:30:09
Oh, yeah, absolutely. We didn't even have cell phones then. But we might have
had a couple of those old-fashioned ones.Bob Gates 2:30:13
I never had to talk her into letting me buy a---.
Sarah Milligan 2:30:16
Oh.
Bob Gates 2:30:17
--Palm Pilot.
Kim Lady Smith 2:30:17
No, you didn't. [laughter] You had to talk me into a lot of stuff (??)
Bob Gates 2:30:20
Other people around here said, "no, they won't do that."
Kim Lady Smith 2:30:25
Bob and--I we've worked pretty well as a team. We had our differences. He always
wanted [to] put the school kids on the people mover and I would always put my foot down. Said "no, we're not gonna have school kids fall off the people movers." But we always comp---.Bob Gates 2:30:37
But you didn't mind them falling in the river.
Kim Lady Smith 2:30:39
No, we always had control (??). We had Fish and Wildlife patrol the river.
Sarah Milligan 2:30:42
That was covered.
Bob Gates 2:30:43
Yeah, okay. Well, we were--.
Kim Lady Smith 2:30:44
It was covered---.
Bob Gates 2:30:45
--The ground one time (??) well, I find.
Kim Lady Smith 2:30:46
Yeah, real[ly] good.
Sarah Milligan 2:30:48
So, here's what I remember of Cameron, Bob, when I first started working for
Bob. I remember we had one of our--one of our first meetings, because I started working in January, this is probably February, March. And we had been trying to figure stuff out. And we're kind of like having a hard time focusing on what we needed to do, and Kim came downstairs, and Bob started talking about all the things that--I was like, "we're gonna focus on this, and then we can do this, and then we can broaden this out." And she said, "all right, focus, we're gonna focus. [laughs] This is what we need to talk about right now." And I thought, "that's the answer. This is great." I was like, "these two work together awesome." Because you had this whole creative side, and Kim was very good at just saying, "alright, you've done enough of that, let's get back to where we need to get."Bob Gates 2:31:30
Yeah.
Sarah Milligan 2:31:31
Wouldn't--would never shut you down--would just help steer like the details you
needed to look at right then.Kim Lady Smith 2:31:37
It did work that way. And but you know, I've said this about Bob, many times,
but probably not on tape. But when Bob, you know, I was a supervisor, and I had all these people that you know, reported to me, but with Bob and the Folklife Festival's the first time it really hit me hard that nobody worked for me, I worked for them. And it was my job, to get them the resources that they needed to do their job. Not to tell them what to do, although there would be times, I had to be responsible, but you know, that we truly were a team, and I had to learn from what they as professionals wanted to do, and he taught me how to push the envelope. He also taught me when to draw the line, [laughter] but you know, those were those were good things for me, professionally. So, I think we really did, you know, we had our moments, I'm sure. Like I say, this thing was stressful, but it became a good--I try to stay organized. He was the wonderful programmer who understood what was possible.Bob Gates 2:32:48
I was organized, sometimes. [laughter]
Sarah Milligan 2:32:50
When Kim handed you a folder that was already pre-organized, [laughter] maybe.
Kim Lady Smith 2:32:53
You know, he was great--at problem solving. If there was a crisis, Bob never
would panic. Never, he's always just, "okay, we'll figure out a way to do this." Which was very good for everyone around them.Bob Gates 2:33:10
I hated people saying that "we can't do this either."
Kim Lady Smith 2:33:12
Oh, yeah.
Bob Gates 2:33:13
This, "oh, just forget about that, we can't do this." I always tried to figure
out ways of making it happen.Kim Lady Smith 2:33:20
You know, he'd maneuver around you.
Bob Gates 2:33:23
And it would work, not around you. [laughter]
Sarah Milligan 2:33:26
Right. "let's not---let's not do the piano, if we have 10 minutes before we have
to start and we haven't booked when, oh I don't have that one."Bob Gates 2:33:32
Oh, see, that actually happened in Louisiana. Before that whereas a guy I was
depending on to have a piano didn't do it, and it was a big--it wasn't a Cajun band, it was another band. And it was a big problem. So, I guess I learned from that it's better just to go and do it yourself.Kim Lady Smith 2:33:53
Well--.
Bob Gates 2:33:53
And figure it out.
Kim Lady Smith 2:33:53
They had the hotel--you know, people would say yes to Bob for things that you
wouldn't expect them to say yes.Sarah Milligan 2:34:00
He's a chatterbox (??).
Bob Gates 2:34:00
Well, we were giving them all these people, you know, they were getting a lot of
business from us, a lot of money.Sarah Milligan 2:34:06
Billed their hotel.
Bob Gates 2:34:07
Well, they actually do that with--you know, Janet uses them in health. Though,
when she does a big thing for her senior citizens that they have--they let them use the linens for that meeting. And I don't know if she got it for me, but they're pretty open to doing that kind of thing, so.Kim Lady Smith 2:34:24
People won't doing anything if you don't ask. So---.
Bob Gates 2:34:26
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 2:34:27
You know, we learned to ask. So--.
Sarah Milligan 2:34:31
That's a good point. Well, any--anything else?
Kim Lady Smith 2:34:34
It was fun. It was fun. Glad we did it.
Bob Gates 2:34:36
One of the things I want to say about Kim is that I always--besides the
festival, I always kind of depended on her to tell me what was going on in the state and what the political consequences of doing this or doing that. And I really missed that when you left. [laughter] Because I was supposed to be in charge of the program completely, and I didn't--I didn't know, you know, wha--what I should what should I be doing with this, and who should I be talking to? In some ways, I wish we still had, you know, I had kept that advisory---.Kim Lady Smith 2:35:10
Those connections--.
Bob Gates 2:35:11
--Advisory group that I had in Berea when we came here, but I could see how
there wasn't room for that with an oral history group. The [Kentucky] Oral History CommissionKim Lady Smith 2:35:18
But it wasn't the oral history, it was the Historical Society board, they were
to be your advocates.Bob Gates 2:35:23
Yeah.
Kim Lady Smith 2:35:23
And you had the Arts Council board. So, to have another board on top of that,
you still had sort of an informal group that you didn't have a formal group that saw you---that defended you, that were your champions. Oh, above and beyond what the Historical Society and Arts council provided.Bob Gates 2:35:39
Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take part with AFS this year--they're talking about
advocacy. And I'm with a group and so far, the group's been talking about, oh, the advocacy on NEA-level. Advocacy, on the national level. That's what we need to do with AFS. But I think a lot of what problems with our states are--is that we don't have the advocacy within the state, for our programs, as well established as we should.Kim Lady Smith 2:36:11
Well, when economic times are tough advocacy is absolutely critical, but it's
also not necessarily successful.Bob Gates 2:36:19
Yes.
Kim Lady Smith 2:36:20
So, it's really, the economic times the state faces now are worse than anything
I ever had to deal with in my 27 years with the state. So, it's kind of a new ballgame, but it makes it even more important that any program or any agency continues to build those ties, because the opportunities will be there in the future, and you have to be ready for them. So that's my political philosophy here for the day. Anyway, on the festival, they were great. We loved them. They're great memories for us, and I think they did everything that we hoped they would do. And maybe someday they'll be back.Bob Gates 2:37:02
Yeah, I could see it.
Sarah Milligan 2:37:05
Well, thanks. Thanks for talking about it today.
Kim Lady Smith 2:37:09
Okay, thank you.
Sarah Milligan 2:37:11
Okay.
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