JEFFERSON*ROCKS

By ANDREW MCGINN
a.mcginn@beeherald.com

Over the past 14 months, Greene County’s casino has arguably upset the balance of power in this part of the state.

From time immemorial, we were expected to drive to Des Moines to see (insert the name of your favorite music act here).

And we dutifully complied, knowing full well that the only way Kenny Rogers was ever going to end up in Jefferson was if the GPS on his tour bus took on a persona like HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” (“I’m sorry, Kenny, I can’t take you to Kansas City.”)

Not anymore.

Earlier this month, word got to our metro friends that we had something they wanted.

“We’ve got the No. 1 country artist in the nation,” the muffled voice on the other end of the phone told them. “You want him? Come and get him!”

(Insert maniacal cackle.)

Of the 1,200 tickets sold to Aaron Lewis’ Oct. 8 show at Wild Rose Casino, 40 percent were snatched up by people who had to drive an hour or more to get here, according to marketing manager Aaron Harn, the 40-year-old Waterloo native who’s on a hot streak when it comes to booking entertainment into the casino’s Greene Room event center.

“It’s great that we’re competing with Des Moines, essentially,” Harn said.
If it’s still surreal that Jefferson even has a casino in the first place, just try wrapping your mind around the fact that Lewis’ album, “Sinner,” was the nation’s top country album when he rolled into Greene County.

Clearly, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

No, clearly — Kansas already played Wild Rose Casino in April.

It, too, was a sellout.

Even for Harn — a gaming industry veteran who did this line of work in Mississippi before Iowa-based Wild Rose offered him a chance to come home — seeing Kansas on a stage across the road from Syngenta rocking out to “Carry on Wayward Son” was pretty special.

“It was great to see icons of rock ‘n’ roll on stage in Jefferson, Iowa,” he said.

Under Harn’s guidance, Jefferson is emerging as an unlikely destination for music fans, a notion backed up by multiple sold-out shows in multiple genres.

More than 30,000 tickets have been sold to shows at Wild Rose Jefferson since its first concert in August 2015, Harn said.

Tom Timmons, president of West Des Moines-based Wild Rose Casinos, which also owns casinos in Clinton and Emmetsburg, is particularly impressed with his impresario in Jefferson.

“Entertainment has been part and parcel of the gaming industry since before the Rat Pack. It’s an important part of the business,” Timmons explained. “I personally have been involved with booking acts for more than 27 years, and I can tell you that Aaron is really excellent at knowing what’s hot; what kinds of acts and artists will be well-received and what’s going on in the industry.”

But as it turns out, booking entertainment at the casino isn’t completely unlike sitting down at the blackjack table.

“A little of this is luck,” Timmons said, “but it takes skill to learn your market and know what will succeed.”

Take Aaron Lewis.

“It was perfect timing,” Harn said. “We caught lightning in a bottle with that one.”

Harn booked Lewis, the former lead singer of Staind, back in January at a time when he still presumably appealed more to fans of Buckcherry than Buck Owens.

Tickets went on sale in July.

“Most of our ticket sales happen within the first few weeks,” Harn said.

But as September gave way to October, a couple hundred seats remained for the Oct. 8 show, Harn said.

What put the show over the top was the day Harn announced on Facebook that Lewis had the No. 1 country album in the U.S. with “Sinner.”

Just three tickets were left at day’s end.

“I try to keep my finger on the pulse of what’s going on,” Harn said.

While the Greene Room seats 1,200, Harn said he could’ve sold even more tickets to Lewis if given the space.

On top of it all, Carrie Underwood was scheduled to play Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines the night before, potentially dissuading country music fans there from shelling out an extra 40 bucks and having to drive an hour off the interstate into Deer Country U.S.A.

“I am sure there are people who came to the Aaron Lewis show who had never been to Jefferson,” Timmons observed. “Now, they might want to come back for another show or something else.”

After all, as Harn notes, “Where else can you go and be 20 feet away from a superstar?”

For Wild Rose Jefferson, Lewis straddled the line perfectly between country and rock.

Entertainment at most casinos is heavy on classic country, Harn said, which appeals to the core gaming demographic of older patrons.

But at Wild Rose Jefferson, Harn explained, the demographic actually skews a little younger, meaning there’s also a market for rock.

“I’ve been trying to bring Tesla here since I got here,” Harn said. “We just haven’t made it work.”

He’s also been working to land Poison frontman Bret Michaels.

It’s just a matter of scheduling.

“Wild Rose gives me great freedom to book what I think will work,” he said.

He’s definitely onto something, as proven by an outdoor show this summer by Hairball attended by 2,500 people. The band pays homage to all those groups in the ’80s that seemed larger than life (with the hair to match).

“In Jefferson,” Timmons said, “we can do more with entertainment because we’re working in a region that can draw from the metro, yet it has a healthy base to fill any act or show.”

But not even the Hard Rock Casino in Sioux City is all rock all the time.

Hard Rock seems content to host everybody from Queensryche to Ronnie Milsap — a strategy to get as many people to part with their money as possible.

“The goal is to get ’em in here to get ’em down there,” Harn said, gesturing toward the gaming floor. “It’s no secret.”

In Jefferson, concerts are open to all ages.

The community’s small size provides Harn with an almost immediate sounding board for feedback. In fact, he can barely go to the gas station or grocery store without someone asking about what’s coming up or who they should get.

A music fan himself, Harn is a self-described classic rock guy.

“I’m an ’80s guy,” he said, “and that shows a little bit.”

Tickets went on sale Monday for a series of newly announced shows, including a Dec. 1 gig by Naked Eyes and Wang Chung — no, for real, the “everybody Wang Chung tonight” guys — and a March 11 stop by “One Night of Queen,” Gary Mullen’s Queen tribute show from the U.K.

The Naked Eyes/Wang Chung double-bill came about with a call to Harn. (And if you’re having a senior moment trying to place Naked Eyes, they did the seminal new wave hit “Always Something There to Remind Me” in 1983.) The acts were in need of a show en route from Chicago to Kansas City.

“That says a lot that we have acts reaching out to us,” he said.

The Charlie Daniels Band ended up before a sold-out crowd at Wild Rose in September 2015 the same way.

“We’re in a perfect location,” Harn said. “They called and said, ‘Hey, we need a stage that night.’ ”

Admittedly, though, “I never thought they’d be passing through Iowa,” Harn said of Wang Chung.

The crowd for Naked Eyes will undoubtedly be different than the crowd Nov. 25 for B.J. Thomas, despite the fact that the legendary songwriting team of Bacharach and David wrote their signature songs (“Always Something There to Remind Me” and “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head”).

Those crowds will be different than the one likely to attend the MMA bout Harn is working to finalize for February, which is a shame ’cause if you don’t think the electric sitar on B.J. Thomas’ “Hooked on a Feeling” is seriously cool, you deserve a roundhouse kick upside the head.

But it’s all part of the plan.

“There’s a lot of demand in this market for entertainment,” Harn said. “It’s one of the promises we made, to bring entertainment to Jefferson.

“We’re trying to hold onto that.”