FREE BEER! - Or At Least That's What The Sign Said

… Or did I read that wrong? Nope … FREE BEER … in big bold letters on a banner hanging on the front wall of the BBQ restaurant. Couldn't be?!? I said to myself! I just happen to know, from past experiences with a truckload of radio promotions in night clubs, that Arizona law prohibits the giving away of any alcoholic beverage in a licensed establishment where such beverages are intended to be for sale.

Many an unsuspecting night club has been caught unaware and paid a hefty fine for trying to get around the law with what they think is a loophole … such as giving away a free beer with the purchase of a steak dinner. Can't be done – not in Arizona. You can sell the beer for twenty bucks and give away the steak but you can not reverse the process – or so I've been told.

So you can imagine my curiosity when I knew that I'd read the sign correctly – FREE BEER! I just had to drive off the road and into the huge parking lot that was about a football field in size … just to see up close.

Sure enough – creative marketing or deceptive advertising … it's all in the eye of the beholder. For the sign I knew said FREE BEER … actually said a lot more. It did have to do with FREE and it had to do with BEER but the two were not connected.

The words FREE and BEER, one on top of the other, were in the biggest size lettering possible. White letters on a red background. Just following the word FREE, but now in dark black type, still on the red background and in a drastically smaller size was the word WI-FI. And just preceding the word BEER, again in black and drastically smaller in size, was the word COLD.

So up close, the sign actually read, “FREE WI-FI, COLD BEER”. But with the similar color characteristics of red and black and the small black type, it was easily camouflaged when read from any distance.

The sign did what it was supposed to do, dragging me in from the highway. But was it honest?

Are we doing something similar in bluegrass music? Do we advertise a bluegrass festival, and lead an unsuspecting public to believe that it might be their own definition of what bluegrass means, only to be disappointed when they discover the promoter's definition to be on the completely opposite end of the spectrum? Do we label our music “Americana” for today's market when just a few years ago, the very same style was “Bluegrass”? Do we market our latest album to the bluegrass consumer when it is really more swing, jazz and blues than it is bluegrass? Will this bring our traveler, our unsuspecting fan, in off the music highway?

As Granddad used to say, “Clean your glasses, read the fine print and expect to pay for what you get.”  But he also said "When you buy a horse, don't be willing to settle for a mule".