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Despite complaints, tickets are usually available, Britt says By BILL VARBLE Want to see Chick Corea or John Prine at Britt in June? No problem. If you want to see Ricky Skaggs or John Lee Hooker, it's OK if you'll settle for general admission, sitting on the lawn. If you want to see Bill Cosby, there's a window, but it's closing. His afternoon performance June 27 at the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater in Medford is sold out. Reserved seats for his evening show on the Britt hillside are gone, too, but some general admission tickets remain. With Britt tickets going on sale to the public Monday, tickets and problems in getting them have sparked complaints. The top gripe: getting skunked. John Dutcher of Medford says he quit supporting Britt a few years ago after he couldn't get tickets to several shows he really wanted to see. "Three families joined to increase our chances of getting tickets," he says. "We all had the same experience. No tickets." Britt spokesman Arthur Waitt acknowledges you can't buy reserved seats for every show. "If you're limiting yourself to the 20 percent that have the highest demand, that might be true," he says. "But we have tickets for everything right now." That's counting general admission. Reserved seats for 13 shows were sold out in the pre-season sale for members held in March and April. Britt puts on about 45 events a year. About one-third of the shows sold out of reserved seats last season. "For most shows you can walk up and get a reserved seat the night of the show," Waitt says. For some dates there's simply more demand than supply. Britt says in mailings that a membership is a contribution and does not imply a guarantee of tickets. Dutcher says he and his friends figured those who buy a basic membership for $35 are sometimes unable to get reserved seats because they're reserved for bigger contributors. "When we didn't get tickets, my neighbors and I were all comparing notes on how big a check we sent," he says. Waitt says it doesn't work that way, although the biggest contributors do get first crack. "Lots of $35 and $50 level members do get what they want," Waitt says. "Rarely do the reserved seats go entirely to high-end members. For almost every show this year you'll see $35 members in reserved seats. The one exception is Chicago (Sept. 5)." One letter to the editor suggested that a limit of four tickets per member would spread tickets around by preventing members from buying large blocks for their friends and families. That's been the case for several years. During the membership sale, the reserved seat limit is four per show for members who contribute $35 to $99, six seats at the $100 to $599 level, and eight at $600 and above. For artists doing more than one show, such as Kenny Rogers, that's four seats total. At one time there was no limit. The limits for a business are the same as for an individual. Waitt says Britt's early ticket sales work like this: "Benefactors" (those who contribute $1,000 or more; there are 150 of these) get their orders filled the first three days of March. On March 4, "Clef Club" members ($600-$999 donors; there are 135 of these) get processed first. The next 1,500 orders in hand that day are then processed. "We dump them in a pile and start randomly picking them," Waitt says. At that time, reserved seats almost always remain for all shows. An exception this year was Chicago. Part of the problem is success. Last year's Britt attendance was 57,629. In 1988 it was 42,881. Dutcher says he laments the loss of the small, intimate festival that was Britt in the 1960s. "I think they've gotten too big," he says. Waitt says while hot tickets are a sign of success, Britt is trying to be sensitive to ticket complaints. "We try to tweak it around a little each year." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA