This is just too weird to me, that while I am working on writing some of my eBook
manuscript about my experiences in the music business in Missoula and that
same night I am doing some searching around on the Internet on Missoula and
the Missoulian paper and I find the following two articles in the Missoulian
newspaper...I could write pages of comments on this and am so happy that it
is being brought to light at about the same time that I am taking my case to
court...and to the media.

I just have to add here that in these articles in the Missoulian and  what you will
find in my writing that part of the problem of why their are no "Big-name concerts
in Missoula?  Much of the blame, if that is the word, falls on the Missoulian itself.
It's lack of support of the arts and independent music scene in Austin for decades.
They are right wing politically and do not support the arts...it is that simple. (period)

I get a feeling that they go out of their way, like some of the religious fanatics there,
and like that I grew up with around in the Texas Bible belt, to try and to bring down
things in the arts and things that they don't believe in.  More on this can be read in
my story.

Where has all the music gone?
By SHERRY JONES of the Missoulian

A big-name concert in Missoula? It's been a long time passing

 Lyle Lovett. James Taylor. Barenaked Ladies. matchbox twenty. The Offspring. The Van's Warped
Tour. Widespread Panic.

These are the concerts passing Missoula by in 2001, concerts some say would have played here in years
past. Now they're going to Bozeman, filling the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse with music and fans and big
money while Missoula's newly renovated Adams Center sits like a wallflower on the edge of the concert
scene.

Who's to blame? Some say the University of Montana's administration, which changed the way concerts
are booked in the arena - and which ordered a remodeling that lost seats and, therefore, potential ticket
sales. Some say Missoula itself is the culprit, making it hard for promoters to do business here and failing
to show up for the concerts that do come.

The causes may be in dispute, but the effect is not: Missoula, heretofore the cultural mecca of Montana,
host to big-name performers over the years such as ZZ Top, Garth Brooks, Bonnie Raitt and Phish, has
seen just one concert in its Adams Center arena in the past year. That one concert, by folk-rocker Ani
DiFranco, lost its promoters $15,000.

Perhaps it was a bad call to host DiFranco, who'd just performed in Missoula a year ago and who was set
to play in Bozeman the next night, acknowledges Marlene Hendrickson, student adviser to University of
Montana Productions, the student organization entrusted - before last November -- with bringing
entertainment to the campus and the town. The students took the risk, says Cliff Cosgrove, UM Productions'
director, because they so badly wanted an Adams Center concert.

"There were no shows coming in," Cosgrove says, "and we wanted at least one thing to start the year off for
the students."

While losing money is no fun, making it is not UM Productions' primary mission, Cosgrove says. Bringing arts
and entertainment to Missoula and giving students the chance to produce shows are the organizations' goals.
The organization has met those goals with great success for 30 years, he and Hendrickson point out -- which
makes the loss of power to book arena concerts all the more confusing and frustrating, they say.

UM Productions booked seven concerts in the Adams Center during the 1997-98 school year, the last full
year before the arena's 1999 remodeling. In September 2000 the university hired Patrick Lloyd, director for
17 years of Expo Square in Tulsa, Okla., as executive director for public events at the center, at a salary of
$79,000. His mandate: Increase revenues so the Adams Center could pay off its $16.5 million debt.

The following November, UM Productions got the word from the university's department of administration
and finance: No more booking concerts in the Adams Center.

"Truly, there hasn't been a show since the day they told us not to do it anymore," Hendrickson says.

The decision to change, which Cosgrove attacks as "ill-informed," stemmed largely from the need to pay
off that bond issue, says Rosi Keller, associate vice-president for administration and finance at UM.
University administrators believed putting concert bookings into Lloyd's hands would result in more, not
fewer, concerts in the Adams Center, not only increasing revenues but also giving students more experience
in producing big shows.

"Pat has years and years of experience in this field," she says.

True, but Lloyd's experience lies in Tulsa, a world away, concert-wise, with its own promoters and booking
agents. "I had no pre-existing arrangement or relationship with promoters in this part of the country, certainly
not," he acknowledges.

UM Productions did have those relationships - although, as Keller argues, staffers come and go there as they
enter the university and then graduate. The organization's permanent position, its student adviser, has seen
turnover, too.

Bozeman, on the other hand, has to its credit Tom Garnsey, owner of Vootie Productions and a concert
promoter in that city for 10 Þ years.

"A lot of it is relationships with the agents," says Garnsey, who booked Bob Dylan, Lovett, DiFranco and
Widespread Panic into the Breeden Fieldhouse.  "I was one of the first people in Montana that started buying
shows from the agents, and a lot of them have decided to stick with me," he says.

And, while the Adams Center was getting its facelift, Montana State University was hiring Duane Morris to
book entertainment for its arena. Morris knew the region, having run the Yakima Valley Sundome in
Washington from 1990-94 before working as director of North American Tours for Feld Entertainment,
which handles the Barnum & Bailey Ringling Bros. Circus, Disney on Ice, comedy duo Siegfried and Roy and
other big-name acts.

"This is a total relationship-driven business," Morris says. "I was fortunate; when I got here, I had relationships
I brought with me. Plus, the relationships that have been developed in the last three years since I got here, I
have been able to parlay ... into a decent concert business."   His secret, he says, lies not only in his contacts
but also in his initiative and drive.

"If you're reading publications looking for open dates, you're too late," he says. "By that point the tours have
already been routed and confirmed. You've got to be out talking to people on the front end. It's a lot of hard
work."

It's work that takes up most of Morris' time, he says; other tasks associated with Breeden Fieldhouse marketing,
such as booking conventions and trade shows, are left to other staffers. By contrast, Lloyd and Adams Center
marketer Mary Muse must do all the above; Muse, for instance, is in the thick of a membership drive for the
center's luxury skyboxes, according to Lloyd.

All the hard work in the world, though, won't change the fact that the Breeden Fieldhouse has more seats than the
Adams Center - many more seats, since the renovations of both facilities. Some say Breeden increased its seats;
Morris couldn't confirm that, but its 8,617 capacity far exceeds the Adams Center's, which maxes out at 7,000
if audience members stand on the floor. (With floor seating, that number shrinks to 5,000-6,000.) The number
of concert seats was higher before the remodeling; no one seems to be able to say exactly how many seats were
lost, but athletic events, which seat audiences all around the floor, lost about 1,150 seats - and, according to
Hendrickson, the Adams Center packed in some 9,200 audience members for a Garth Brooks concert in the
early 1990s.   Size does matter, says Lloyd. Jeff Kicklighter agrees.

"You're fighting yourself by getting smaller, you know what I mean? says Kicklighter, promoter with Bravo
Productions in Boise, Idaho - which put on the Taylor, Barenaked Ladies, matchbox twenty, Warped Tour and
The Offspring shows. "By making it smaller, all the gravy goes away."

By "gravy," Kicklighter says, he means profit to his own outfit. Since promoters must pay performers as well as
pay all costs associated with putting on a show, their profit comes in the last 15 to 20 percent of proceeds, he says.
When audiences are paying $35 to $40 a ticket, 1,000 seats can make a big difference, he says. So  can 500.

Those numbers only really matter when a show sells out, he adds, and a sellout is a phenomenon Missoula rarely
sees any more. The last three concerts Bravo brought to Missoula - Bo Diddley, the Brian Setzer Orchestra and
Robert Cray - all lost money, despite playing at the 1,000-seat Wilma Theatre, he says. A Bravo concert by funk
artist George Clinton planned for the Adams Center last April had to move to the Wilma for a lack of ticket sales
- although a Clinton show three years earlier brought 3,500 to the Adams.

"All the shows we do there are great, and I love them, but nobody's coming out to buy tickets," Kicklighter says.
"You can talk all day about how you need more shows, but if nobody buys tickets they're not going to come."

What's more, Kicklighter says, attitudes in Missoula have made it difficult for his company to bring summer concerts
here. Noise complaints caused the promoter's Caras Park Summer Series to shut down after bringing concerts
here by Santana, Jethro Tull and others, and a Bravo attempt to bring the Warped Tour of up-and-coming alternative
bands was thwarted by the Fort Missoula Historical Society's refusal to let the concert take place on Fort grounds.

Now when Bravo thinks "outdoors," it calls the Gallatin County Fairgrounds in Bozeman, which has staged the
Warped Tour for two years running and, last summer, hosted The Offspring, a nationally touring rock band.

"I'd love to come back and do a show there if there was a place to do it, and if the people there were a little more
accepting," Kicklighter says.  And yes, he adds, the changes at UM have made booking shows at the Adams
Center more difficult. "It's definitely easier to have one person to go to for everything - rent, catering, whatever.

"Booking-wise, it's whoever can get me the availability of the building quicker. A lot of times it's down to, if I'm up
between two buildings and one calls me back quicker than the other, sometimes that building's going to get a show."
"Which is all the more reason why they should let us do it like we used to," says Cosgrove at UM Productions.
With a staff of 20, someone is in the office at any time during the day - something Lloyd's staff of two can't achieve,
he says.

Lloyd acknowledges that something is remiss where Adams Center concerts are concerned. He thinks the building's
rent may be too high, and said he would bring it down in hopes of attracting more shows. As for turning back the
booking tasks to UM Productions, it's on the table as of a Tuesday afternoon meeting - although Lloyd says he's
loathe to give up the opportunity to work with, and develop relationships with, concert promoters.
"It's appropriate," he says, "that the current arrangement be revisited."

             By SHERRY JONES of the Missoulian

             Widespread Panic won't play Missoula this year for the first time in several years, but neither
             marketing, ticket sales or arena size is the reason why, band manager Buck Williams says.
             An email a University of Montana security chief sent after last November's concert in the
             Adams Center is the culprit, instead, he says.

             "You bet we had 'Wide Spread Panic,'" reads the message sent from former Director of
             Public Safety Charles L. Gatewood's e-mail address to a campus in Carbondale, Ill.

             "We did not have enough staff on shift. Our student security wanted to watch the concert
             instead of doing their jobs. The parking lot next to the Center where the concert was being
             held there was an excessive amount of illegal activity keeping the on shift officers busy. The
             officers inside had to deal with a lot of smoking both cigarettes and marijuana. The base (sic)
             player of the band lit a marijuana cigarette on stage and the sound and light person for the
             band was also caught smoking marijuana."

             "It's just an outright lie," says Williams, a manager and booking agent for the band, which has
             played in Missoula to huge crowds nearly every year for the last several years. "It's one thing
             to get caught and accused of something you're doing," William says. "It's another thing to be
             accused of something you're not doing."

             Gatewood could not be reached for comment.

             While associated with marijuana and other drugs in the past, Widespread Panic cleaned up
             its act years ago, he says.

             "Dave had just been in rehab," Williams says of bass player Dave Schools, "and if there was
             anything farther from his mind it was smoking a marijuana cigarette. This band, they don't
             even do things for High Times (magazine) any more; it's not the element that they're after.
             We're trying to be on a different course."

             The email, forwarded to Williams' office, resulted in beefed-up security, and heightened
             tensions - both unnecessary, he maintains - at later Widespread Panic concerts that season,
             he says. Hence the decision to skip Missoula this year - and play at the Breeden Fieldhouse
             in Bozeman at 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 19.

             "We do really, really well in Missoula," Williams says. "We have a really strong following
             there. But you've got to go place where you're welcome not only by the fans but by the
             security, the town itself. We go to places where we feel like we're wanted - which is almost
             everywhere."