Religious Music Shows: Louisville's Big-time Gospel Hour

One man's 50 Cent is another man's Crabb Family. One man's caviar is another's pork chop sandwich. And one city's Intl. CES is another's Natl. Quartet Convention.

The latter city would be Louisville, Ky. And James Wood, president of the Greater Louisville Convention & Visitors Bureau, is happy to know the premiere annual event in the Southern gospel world, held in his city since 1993, recently re-booked space through 2009.

Jim Cumbee, president of non-broadcast media for Salem Communications, said the food court at the Kentucky Exposition Center during the NQC every September serves the best pork chop sandwich he's found anywhere.

And the Crabb Family, along with Legacy Five, the Hoppers and the Dove Brothers (What, not familiar with them?) are the rock stars of their world. They hit the stage on the final of six evening concerts that draw 40,000 attendees every year, and then pour them onto a 175,000 square foot showfloor with 450 exhibitors at the biggest consumer show you might never have heard of — unless you're a Southern gospel fan, that is.

When convention and visitors bureau executives get together, some of them just sigh and shake their heads when they talk about what they can offer a show manager compared to a Las Vegas or an Orlando. Others just keep their mouths shut and hope nobody finds out how good they've got it.

Wood might be one of the latter. With a 200,000 sq. ft. expansion completed just two months ago, he now can offer nearly 1 million sq. ft. of prime exhibit space inside, up to 300 acres outside and 19,000 parking spaces at the Kentucky Exposition Center — which is good, because Louisville sits at the intersection of three major highways that attract tradeshow and convention attendees from throughout the Midwest and South.

That's enough to, year after year, draw huge crowds to Tradeshow Week 200 shows like the Intl. Lawn, Garden & Power Equipment Expo; the Annual Natl. RV Trade Show; and the Mid-America Trucking Show.

But before Wood can even get to those TSW 200 shows, he's got events like the Promise Keepers Regional Conference, the North American Natl. Livestock Exhibition, a little race called the Kentucky Derby and, of course, the Natl. Quartet Convention.

"To a certain degree, it fits the culture of our community pretty well," Wood said.

The first NQC was organized by what has become a legend in the Christian music industry. JD Sumners was a backup musician for Elvis Presley during most of his touring career; he was also instrumental in moving gospel music from a culture that found expression only in small Southern churches to a recording business with its own stars, distribution systems and playtime on radio stations.

That first show and convention in Sumners' hometown of Memphis, Tenn., was held in 1957. Clarke Beasley, executive vice president and show manager of NQC, said Sumners wanted to provide Southern gospel music with a wider audience than it already had.

"That original vision runs through to this day," Beasley said.

The first few years, the convention and tradeshow bounced from Memphis to Birmingham, Ala., to Atlanta, finally landing in Nashville, Tenn., in 1972. It remained in Nashville until moving on to Louisville in 1993.

That was before the opening of Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, Beasley said, "and we were having to turn people away in droves. The Kentucky Exposition Center offered us the opportunity to grow."

Plus, research by NQC indicated that most attendees, even before the move to Louisville, came from Ohio and Kentucky.

"The first year, we doubled our attendance and quadrupled our floor space," Beasley said.

Besides proximity, he went on, Louisville offers affordability.

"Our average attendee is an evangelical Christian between the ages of 40 and 60," Beasley said. "We are dealing with what is essentially a consumer show, and we need to keep it affordable."

Besides merely putting on a tradeshow and concert program, NQC offers tour packages from throughout the Midwest and South that attract more than 10 percent of attendees. The cost ranges from a low of $285 for a two-night midweek package that includes lodging, concert and showfloor admission, meals and parking, to $577 for a similar six-day package.

"It's the biggest event in the world of Southern gospel music," said Ted Leonard, president of Daywind Music in Hendersonville, Tenn., "and we utilize their audience any way we can. They get all the people there, and we take advantage of it."

Daywind Music rents more than 800 sq. ft. on the exhibit floor, produces a number of musical presentations throughout the day, showcases its recording artists in the evening concerts (the core of the event) and hosts an evening cruise on the Ohio River.

The cruise and performances are meant to promote Daywind Records' musical artists. The booth is the heart of promotional activities for Daywind Soundtrack, electronic accompaniment primarily for small to midsized churches that may not be able to provide live musicians for their choirs.

"People come with a list of what they want," Leonard said.

Of the eight events Daywind exhibits at every year, including the Christian Booksellers Assn. Intl. Convention, a TSW 200 show, Leonard said NQC is the best in terms of results for both parts of his business.

Beasley said NQC has little competition in terms of similar shows.

"But we're competing against other destinations for the vacation dollar," he said, because there are musical venues in such resort areas as Branson, Mo. and Nashville that offer gospel music.

NQC, a for-profit firm, launched regional spinoffs in Fresno, Calif. and Red Deer, Alberta, in the late 1990s, but sold them in recent years.

"We needed to focus more attention on the national show," Beasley said.

Typically held the second week in September, the 2001 event was in its second day when the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks took place.

"That's when our attendance records stopped," Beasley said.

"We get a lot of older people," he said. "The following year, there was just a lot of nervousness around those dates."