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The Strawberry Festival's general manager has spent years cultivating ties to country music's top performers, and she's dished up a tasty 2002 lineup.
By DAVE SCHEIBER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 28, 2002
He was a young, mostly unknown act when he signed in October 1990 to play the Florida Strawberry Festival.
Five months later, when he hit the stage in Plant City, Garth Brooks was the biggest draw country music had seen in years, riding the wave of Friends in Low Places and redefining the genre.
Still, when it comes to the Strawberry Festival's rich country music history, the Brooks that matters most goes by the name of Patsy.
Since the late 1970s, Patsy Brooks has played a pivotal role in shaping the impressive lineup each winter in Plant City. This year, the list of acts is particularly strong -- topped by multiple Country Music Association Award and Grammy winner Vince Gill, back for his fourth visit; reigning CMA male and female artists of the year Toby Keith and Lee Ann Womack; and 2000 CMA Horizon Award winner for best newcomer, Brad Paisley.
Relying on intuition and persistence, and a healthy budget, Brooks has consistently helped fill the roster with top acts of the day -- whether it was Mickey Gilley and Johnny Lee at the height of the early '80s Urban Cowboy craze, up-and-coming "new traditionalist" stars such as George Strait and Reba McEntire in '87, or two huge catches during country's early '90s boom: Garth Brooks and, one year later, Billy Ray Cyrus with Achy Breaky Heart mania.
Not bad for a Plant City native who started at the festival in 1976 as a "Girl Friday" secretary. She later served 17 years as the festival's assistant manager and, for the past seven years, has been general manager.
As a teenager in the early '60s, Brooks remembers how country performances were always a big part of the event, with headliners like Dale Evans, Ken Curtis (Festus on Gunsmoke) and Freddy Fender. But the shows were confined to the weekends and not nearly as ambitious in scope.
All that began to change in the '70s. By the time Brooks moved into the musical operation in '78, the program had shifted to daily shows with more artists, and the Strawberry Festival's tradition for quality country was born.
At the time, she worked with festival vice president Mac Smith and received recommendations for bookings from a committee of community residents. "There were about nine people, and they'd give us some names, and then we'd approach the agencies, and I would negotiate all the contracts," she says.
But Brooks knew she needed to learn more if she was going to book the hottest acts. So she became a member of the Country Music Association and started attending the October awards show in Nashville. Working closely with chairmen of the entertainment committee -- Roy Parke and later Joe Newsome -- Brooks and her colleagues would attend Nashville showcases featuring up-and-coming stars and meet artists and their agents. The CMA connection provided an invaluable education for Brooks.
"I remember when I saw Alabama showcasing for us at a convention for the CMA in Nashville in the early '80s," she says. "Nobody knew who they were. Well, I came home and said, "We need to get Alabama.' And our people, not knowing them yet, said no. And I said, "Well, you'll know who they are next year!' We could have had them for $2,500, but the next year, they cost $25,000, which was a lot of money back then. But we paid it, and we got 'em."
Brooks' biggest dream early in her tenure was to land two members of country's elite, Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty. "I always used to think, we will have arrived if we can book them," she says. "They were the top artists in my mind."
Brooks went to work, and for the 1983 festival, she landed both of them, along with Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash.
A sampling of her other marquee bills:
1985: Ronnie Milsap, Louise Mandrell, Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, Lee Greenwood, Larry Gatlin, Mickey Gilley and Roy Clark.
1990: Ricky Skaggs, Tanya Tucker, Waylon Jennings, Charlie Daniels and George Strait.
1991: Reba, Garth, George Jones, Charley Pride, the Oak Ridge Boys, Carl Perkins, Ray Stevens, Gilley and Greenwood.
1993: Gill, Trisha Yearwood, Wynonna, Diamond Rio, Mark Chesnutt and Doug Stone.
And so on through 2002.
The rest of this year's cast includes a mix of familiar names -- from '90s hitmakers Tracy Lawrence and Trace Adkins to stalwarts such as Charlie Daniels, Mel Tellis, Glen Campbell and the Oak Ridge Boys. Wayne Newton, a hit with the older set, returns with his Vegas show.
One measure of the festival's success has been its ability to get the stars to return on a regular basis. The weather certainly doesn't hurt. Many acts use the festival to kick off their new tours.
"Yeah, good old Florida is one of the few places you can figure it's not going to be frosty or snowing this time of year," says repeat performer Charlie Daniels, calling from a frigid tour stop in Colorado.
But Daniels, who won a 1979 Grammy for The Devil Went Down to Georgia, attributes the fair's appeal to more than warm temperatures. It taps into a simple, small-town ambience of country's roots.
"What makes it special for me is that it's a very family oriented thing -- Mom and Dad, and Grandma and Grandpa and the kids and everyone just comes out and enjoys themselves," he says. "It's right there under God's blue sky, and it's just a joy to play and entertain people down there."
Vince Gill, 44, is making his fourth festival appearance. "It's really a fun stage to play on, and it sounds good -- a lot of times you play outdoors, you don't get much ambiance and the sound disappears into the air, but not there," he says.
The singer-songwriter-guitar ace says he hopes to bring his wife, singer Amy Grant, and daughter Corinne with him to Plant City. His performances are on the couple's second wedding anniversary and two days before Corinne's first birthday.
Brooks says the festival has gone all out to make the experience a pleasant one for the performers, who, like Gill, often bring their families.
She points to an array of amenities the festival's stadium offers -- a sprawling 100-foot stage, high-tech sound and lighting, five dressing rooms, a covered area that allows tour buses to park directly behind the stage, electrical hookups for the buses, an elevated lift to put heavy musical gear at stage level.
"We have built a reputation for taking care of the artists -- we give them strawberries when they arrive, we feed them a meal, we give them more strawberries when they leave," she says. "And a big thing is we made the artists feel secure. We limit the people backstage, so they can have their privacy. We want them to bring their family and kids, and not feel like they're on display when they're not performing."
Brooks also has good financial resources.
Ten years ago, it cost about $200,000 for two weeks of twice-daily free concerts. Nowadays, she can spend roughly $800,000, generated by gate admission tickets and concert tickets that now sell for $10 and $5 in addition to the free seating.
That amount goes quickly when booking acts that cost anywhere between $40,000 and $150,000 on average. "We can't do anything over that -- there's just no way," she says.
One artist she always wanted to book was LeAnn Rimes, but her price skyrocketed. "Immediately her price jumped up, and when somebody gets in the $250,000 range, we just can't afford them," she says.
The Florida State Fair, held each February, always books a handful of country headliners -- Travis Tritt and Merle Haggard this year (and often some of the same acts that have played other years in Plant City). But the fair does not try to match the scope of the country lineups at the Strawberry Festival, and it also books a mixture of teen pop, rock and R&B.
"We do try to get something for everyone, whereas the Strawberry Festival gets just country music," says fair publicist Courtney Singletary, a Plant City native. "That's their niche."
It's a niche that has Brooks on the move, preparing for a new country cavalcade. "There are so many memories over all these years," she says. "I'm grateful that I've been allowed to use my creativity and always try to do something different. It's been fun to go to work every day at a job you love."