Four hundred in one day

There is no doubting the pulling power of the Finn brothers — their charity Finn Brothers Play Gracelands concert sold out in 75 minutes on Friday morning.

‘Four Seasons in One Day’ is the title of one of the songs co-written by the brothers - and it was actually more than 400 tickets sold on Friday (the Gracelands charity concert is configured for almost 500 seats).

Backstage Pass promoters Dean and Robyn Taylor say the sales exceeded expectations.

‘We were was hoping to sell out in a day,’’ says Mr Taylor. ‘‘Selling out in a little over an hour was very exciting.’’

Gracelands will benefit entirely from the proceeds of the concert — a major boost for their fundraising effort for a new service centre in Teasdale Street. Neil and Tim are playing for free and providing some production staff. Te Awamutu College has donated the use of the hall, Scott Sound and Lighting is providing the PA and operating the sounds and Rosetown Print and Te Awamutu Courier provided publicity and posters.

Backstage Pass worked with TicketDirect to ticket the show and are very pleased with the system and their help to bring sales to Te Awamutu. TicketDirect worked alongside Te Awamutu Visitor i-SITE Centre to set up a real time on-line sales system and the staff and volunteers ran the sales as a donation to the fundraiser. i-SITE manager Lynne Fenwick says the centre was pleased to be able to contribute and to try the TicketDirect system. She says it was very easy to use and would be worth considering for future events for the town.

Mrs Fenwick says it was exciting to have such a demand. The first buyer started the queue at about 7.50am and by opening time at 9am there was a reasonable line. That didn’t let up until about 10am and the last three or four customers in line unfortunately missed out. Fans were still coming into the office throughout the day and leaving disappointed.

The Te Awamutu office put through 214 tickets, taking over $22,000. TicketDirect acknowledged the partnership selling was a success for them also and were pleased to be involved in such a successful promotion.