Half-Price Chicago Blues Tour Tix 1/16/2010 - 8 blues clubs

1) Please print out your tickets immediately, NOT the day before the tour — if there are any issues to be resolved, we need to resolve them now, not later when it will be way too busy;

2) If you have not received the notification with your username and password to print out your tickets via ETix, then CONTACT ME VIA THE WEBSITE CONTACT FORM, NOT VIA THE POINT, which we have already determined is not a very good channel for detailed communications.

The website contact form is at this URL:
http://www.chicagobluestour.com/bluestour/index.php/contact

I want to try to get all these early tickets issued by the 1st, including any that have issues.

Thanks, have a happy, healthy New Year,
Steve Pasek

For those of you who haven’t been part of any of the ‘earlybird’ programs before, when you get the email from ETix saying “your credit card has been charged X”, X being $45 times the number of tickets, it’s just a default message sent by the system. I don’t have any control over how ETix’s default messages go out, although it seems that when I issue tickets without charge, it shouldn’t send that message.

But no, I am not
1) a scam;
2) ripping you off;
3) some shadowy figure who’s hard to reach via the contact form on the website;

I do see how this might be a little confusing, but if you have questions, use the website’s contact form, I really do answer questions promptly and courteously, ask anyone.

All tickets should be issued by Wednesday the 30th, which is pretty quick since I didn’t even get paid until Tuesday last week, and there’s 131 tickets to issue…manually.

I’ll send another announcement when they’ve all been issued. Please check your spam filters, if you have a “whitelist”, then whitelist “etix.com”, okay?

And please, have a joyful New Year’s Eve.

John Hubbard
Monique Greenlaw
James DeVries
Rosa Haraf
Judy Ruicker
Tom Brady
Nicole Marcotte

CONTACT US AT
earlybirds@chicagobluestour.com

We have sent you 3 notices via The Point asking you for your information to be sent VIA EMAIL so that we can send your blues tour tickets. If you arrive without tickets, you will be handled as “will-call”, meaning, back of the line, we check you in after all the people who arrive with tickets in hand. PLEASE, we need to get these tickets issued now, we won’t have time to do it if you call or email during the week before the tour, it is very very busy then with other logistical issues.

We need your information to send you the tickets you paid for via the Point. If we don’t get this info soon, you may lose your reserved seat and end up waiting far longer than you need to.

Please send the following info VIA EMAIL to earlybirds@chicagobluestour.com

Include
First Name
Last Name
email address
zip code

You will receive tickets via email from ETix.
We need this information immediately, we will need to issue the tickets now, the ETix allocation will go on public sale Sunday, December 27th, and these tix need to be issued before then.

Thanks,
Steve Pasek
Chicago Blues Tour
BiG Productions, Inc.
Chicago, IL

Just to clarify, the address on your ticket is the Congress Hotel, and the 6:30, 6:35, and 7:10 departures are form the Congress Hotel Tap. You may arrive as early as 5 p.m. for the “Real Guitar Heroes” event, but check-in begins at 5:45, and you should check in 40 minutes prior to your designated departure time, or when all prior departure times have been completely checked in.

You will receive a boarding pass with your departure time printed on it to gain admittance to the first bus, and a wristband which will be your pass to clubs and buses for the rest of the evening. If you wish to trade departures with anyone else, you can trade boarding passes at the event, but we will not board anyone on a departure without a boarding pass for that particular departure. If there are no-shows, you can sign up as a “stand-by” and take any remaining vacant seats that resulted from no-shows.

That will keep the event organized. There will be a cash bar, and the kitchen will be open. Here is a PDF of the menu, which also lists drink prices, for your perusal:

The artists will be available for chat, autographs, and of course, CD sales, and we’ll have their CDs playing during the event so you’ll get a preview of the night’s guitar performers.

If you have not printed your ETix out yet, what are you waiting for? 8-) We strongly recommend you do this now to ensure that you can get some support help if there are any issues.

Steve Pasek
BiG Productions, Inc.
Chicago Blues Tour
Chicago, IL

‘Half-Price Chicago Blues Tour Tix 1/16/2010 – 8 blues clubs’ has reached the tipping point!

We raised a total of $1,012!

Earlybird tickets are called that for two reasons — you must buy them early to get a discounted price, and these tickets have the added advantage of starting earlier than the “official” start of the Chicago Blues Tour. The Winter 2010 tour, January 16, 2010, includes 10 live blues bands playing at 8 clubs, with shuttle bus transportation and all admissions included in your ticket. You will need money to pay for drinks — you don’t have to drink alcohol, but the venues require a one-drink minimum purchase per set.

You will receive a map of the shuttle-bus routes which connect all the venues, as well as a schedule which will let you know when the buses depart at each club. Between 1 a.m. and 1:30 a.m., all shuttles gather up passengers and return downtown. The “Earlybird” departures take people to the smaller venues, which start earlier in order to ease overcapacity issues later in the evening when the tour is in full swing, so it’s a big advantage to get in to one of the small venues early when you essentially “have it to yourself”. We discount these tickets in return for people helping us distribute the crowd before the tour starts so that shuttle capacity matches the capacity required at the various venues. (If everyone started at the same place and time, the logistics would be difficult to impossible).