Keesing LIVE returns despite lack of sponsorship

After a two-year hiatus, the return of Keesing LIVE was a well supported one. Organiser of the live music experience, musician Charmaine Limonius, shared that she was grateful for the turnout, but she also had reservations, and revelations that at the end of it all, the event always suffers a loss.

"I just pray that we don't lose too much. I'll be glad if we just break even, but I probably won't. We never have," she told The Gleaner.

Last Saturday night, the multipurpose venue on Keesing Avenue was again home to the familiar live music stage supporting full bands and skilled vocalists. Patrons were treated to the musical stylings of Chris Demontague, who invited the talented Festival Song star Tinga Stewart and the endearing Noddy Virtue on stage. Rising Stars alum Shuga also took to the stage, and was joined by musical partner Bugle. The evening closed with George Nooks delivering a smidgen of Dennis Brown's cool catalogue.

Lack of Sponsors

Limonious echoed the complaint among live music event organisers - lack of sponsorship. "Let's face it, if you don't have sponsorship, you can't make money. It's very hard to get sponsorship, and we have learnt that. If you have to buy everything, you cannot, but we are grateful to the ones that we did get this time."

For Saturday's instalment, the stage was contributed by Electrotech, and the electronic screen which accented the stage was provided by Musical Choice. Limonious sponsored the bar.

"I had to go with my credit card and buy everything that's on that bar. That's a big hole. Unless you're going to charge people $5,000 to come in, and you can't do that because you want people to come," she shared. For the return staging, admission was higher than normal with a ticket cost of $2,000; $2,500 at the gate and $1,500 for students with ID.

Limonius notes that securing the musicians is also a huge bill. "It would be nice to pay the musicians, because we have to find that out of our pockets. So that is what we were really trying to get, but we haven't got there yet," she lamented.

She continued: "As much as you see people out there tonight, a lot of them are guests - they didn't pay to come in. There are guests of artistes, because they gave us a discount - we have to allow them to bring guests in."

Not Like We Used To

Despite the drawbacks, Limonius appeared extremely pleased with the execution of the beloved event. "I'm so thankful, because after two years people could have forgotten about us. We came back because people asked us to. But then, there are a lot of people here who it is their first time. So, we're so grateful," she said.

She shared her desire to keep Keesing LIVE going for the love of music. "Because of the work that goes into it, we were just grumbling - saying we're not doing this again - it's too much of a headache! But everyone has been saying, you've gotta do it again because we really love the music, and people asked us to do it. We're gonna have a powwow at the end of this with our team, and we're going to do it again. We definitely can't do it with the frequency we used to before. We used to do it every two or three months. We can't. If God say yes, we're looking at next year - maybe March? We definitely want to do it more than once a year."

entertainment@gleanerjm.com