Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff
We bet if Augusta had a whole Coliseum Authority of Johnny Hensleys that the James Brown Arena would be rockin' a lot more than it is.
The newest member of the authority has an enthusiasm and a make-it-happen attitude that's contagious. We don't want him to get over it. We want his colleagues on the authority to get a bad case of what he's got.
Hensley's profile also is perfect for the authority: He is a former guitarist and singer for Johnny Hensley and the Red Hots and The Celestials in the late 1950s and early 1960s who went on to become a concert promoter.
Promoting is just what we need. Anyone who was downtown during the run of Mama Mia! at the Bell Auditorium can tell you the hit Broadway musical breathed life into the city's core. It became a little tricky to negotiate a restaurant seat in the hours before the show's performances.
So, we hope Hensley's enthusiasm translates into more weeks like we just experienced with Mama Mia!
We also hope his idea of attracting new acts to town through full-page newspaper ads works, if his colleagues vote to do it.
Hensley wants to send a message to performers that Augusta is hungry, and wants to ask them in the ads what it will take to get them to perform here. He wants to target Billy Joel and Elton John when they're in Atlanta in March, and also has his eyes on Nashville.
That's all well and good -- and newspapers still reach audiences as well or better than most media.
Again, we certainly don't want to dampen Mr. Hensley's enthusiasm. But didn't the authority hire experts to attract acts when it signed up arena-management company Global Spectrum?
In addition, it only seems logical that you can best find out what performers want by talking to their booking agents -- or, perhaps, by figuring it yourself.
You can pretty much assume that performers are attracted to big, modern, state-of-the-art facilities -- which Augusta does not have. They want big, appreciative audiences -- which Mama Mia! proved again Augusta is capable of.
And the big performers, we're sure, are drawn to facilities with good track records. That's something Augusta needs to build on -- and a new performing arts center would be an invaluable start.
We suspect that between Global Spectrum's connections and expertise -- and just common sense -- we already know what works.
It may be mostly a matter of what we have to work with.
