‘LEGENDS’ LOSING DRAW : COUNTRY CONCERTS HIT HARD TIMES

Local country-Western fans are baffled.

According to the latest Arbitron ratings report, more listeners are tuning in to San Diego’s four country radio stations than at any time since the big “Urban Cowboy” craze of the late 1970s.

But the most recent country-Western concert here was the Marlboro Country Music extravaganza at the Sports Arena in November. And it’s unlikely that there will be another one until summer, at the earliest.

It just doesn’t make sense--unless you take careful stock of what has happened lately to San Diego’s two country-Western concert promoters, Rich Man, Poor Man Concert Productions and Luckenbach Productions. The former company--which last year produced three big country shows headlined by The Judds, George Jones and Lacy J. Dalton at the Lakeside Rodeo grounds--was effectively put out of business, at least temporarily, by the federal government on Oct. 31. That’s when an FBI-coordinated raid on Rich Man, Poor Man’s East San Diego headquarters resulted in the arrest of the company’s president, Douglas (Dutch) Schultz (also head of the local chapter of the Hells Angels motorcycle club), on suspicion of using the firm as a front for a $6-million-a-year amphetamine ring.

Luckenbach Productions has had problems of its own. Attendance at country concerts has been falling for two years, Luckenbach president Marc Oswald said.

And since incurring what he described as a “substantial loss” with a Waylon Jennings concert last March at the Sports Arena, Oswald added, his firm has turned its efforts elsewhere. Its plans for 1986 include managing and booking various local and national acts, as well as continuing to produce concerts elsewhere in the nation--but not in San Diego.

“Historically, San Diego has never been a good market for country concerts,” Oswald said. “But the reason we kept putting on shows here was to establish a name for ourselves among local audiences. San Diego, after all, is our home.

“But things are now at the point where San Diego is no longer a lucrative market. Even the fans that used to come out aren’t coming out anymore. And after eight years in the business, it’s just not worth our time and money to continue to beat our heads against the wall in the hopes that, at best, we’ll break even.”

Oswald said that although an upswing in rock radio listenership generally leads to more rock concerts--and greater attendance at those shows--the same does not hold true in the country-Western market.

“A rock act can have one or two hits and right off the bat will do big business at the box office,” Oswald said. “But country fans don’t pay for hits--they pay for legends.

“Acts like The Judds and Ricky Skaggs, who are riding high on the top of the country charts, don’t do nearly as well on the concert scene as you’d think. Hits just don’t translate into ticket sales, as we’ve discovered time and time again.”

At the same time, Oswald said, the handful of country legends are losing their draw due to overexposure.

“People like Hank Williams Jr. and Merle Haggard have played San Diego so many times that, even with a steady flow of new hits, country fans no longer want to pay to see them in concert,” Oswald said. “They’ve already seen them 80 million times.

“And, conversely, these country superstars have seen the same audiences 80 million times, so in lots of cases they’ve lost their spirit in putting on really energetic shows.

“It’s a synergistic effect: Both the audiences and the legends are tired; they’re burned out. And the net result of that is a lack of interest on both parts--which, to promoters like us, translates into increasingly poor ticket sales.”

Promoter Mike Fahn of Fahn & Silva Presents, the local company that routinely produces the biggest rock shows in San Diego, shares Oswald’s pessimism.

“We used to do a number of country concerts every year but we’re a lot more careful now than we’ve ever been,” Fahn said. “There have always been only a handful of real country-Western superstars, and in the last few years that roster hasn’t changed. . . .

“Unless there’s a great influx of new talent that people want to see in concert rather than simply listen to on the radio, it no longer makes sense to produce as many country concerts.”

Still, not everyone shares that opinion. Schultz, free on $300,000 bond, maintains that as soon as he gets his legal problems ironed out it will be “business as usual” for his company.

“We’re already making plans to hold ‘Country Jamboree II’ sometime (in) June, based on the success of our first jamboree last summer,” Schultz said. “And once again, the focus will be on staging a country music event rather than a concert headlined by a single superstar.

“The country fans are still out there but the only way to get them out to a show is to feature lots of different country acts. Last year we drew more than 5,000 people to our first jamboree, which featured 10 different acts, including The Judds, Johnny Lee and Earle Thomas Conley--none of whom qualified as a superstar.

“And I’m confident that the same formula will work again. The headliners aren’t drawing like they used to, but with the right combination of what I consider ‘B’ acts . . . the crowds will still come out.”