Nashville NAMM, Summer 2003

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For the first time in several years, Stick Enterprises had a booth at the NAMM Summer Session in Nashville, Tennessee. The show took place from July 18-20 at the Nashville Convention Center. Greg Howard and I were tasked with getting the booth to Nashville and setting it all up for the opening of the exhibit hall at 10:00AM on the morning of Friday, July 18.

The summer session turned out to be a great show for us. The booth was located on the 2nd floor mezzanine. This area had booths around the perimeter with an open area in the middle where the stairs and escalators were. This meant no booths right in front, only on the sides. The sound was much nicer out there and there was a lot of foot traffic which made it easier for us to get people's attention.

The booth itself featured a great deal of Stick merchandise as well as instruments. Among the instruments at the booth were a 12-string Graphite Grand, a graphite SB8, a 10-string rosewood, an NS/Stick, one of the BassLab 10-string prototypes, and the two padauk Grand Sticks belonging to Greg and myself. Over the course of the three days, many attendees stopped to hear the music coming from the booth and many took an interest in the instruments trying them out with our headphone setup.

Stick performances over the weekend were plenty. On Friday and Saturday, Greg performed in the registration area of the Gaylord Entertainment Center catching as many ears as you could in one place. He also performed at both the EMG booth and the Moses Graphite booth, both suppliers for Stick Enterprises. Detroit NS/Stick player Gary Jibilian also attended the show and performed at the Stick Enterprises booth as well as the EMG booth and the Euphonic Audio booth. At home base, we had performances going on the entirety of the show from Ann Arbor Stick player Steve "Oz" Osburn, Nashville Stick player David Parr, Greg, Gary, and myself. Another benefit to our location was our proximity to the escalator leading up to the food court. The food court took up the entire third floor. At one point, I had gone up to get lunch and while going through the line to the cash register, I could hear the unmistakable sound of Greg Howard performing Pachelbel's Canon above all the rest of the noise in the center. It was nice to have Greg's Stick be the dominant music in the place whenever he played at the booth.

Of course, in addition to the multitude of performances, I should also mention the quality of the performances. We had a sound system in the booth with the amplifier provided by Greg and the speakers provided by Bag End. I received several really nice comments about the playing I did but I must say, Greg was on fire whenever he touched his instrument and churned out some stellar renditions of many of his own tunes as well as several of the covers we've all come to know and love. Gary drew good crowds to his performances at EMG and Euphonic and churned out some great work at the SE booth as well playing several of the pieces from his "Galaxy Rodeo" CD. Steve Oz put in a lengthy session on Friday and some additional time on Saturday and really grabbed the attention of the people passing by as did David Parr on Saturday when he grabbed my padauk Grand and ran a bunch of tunes. The music coming out was virtually non-stop and, as the exhibitors packed up, many of our neighbors came by to say how much they enjoyed the music coming out of our booth all weekend.

All in all, a very satisfying weekend in Nashville.

Regards,
Glenn Poorman