Chamber wants Little Roy & Lizzy Show back

Published 3:56 pm Tuesday, August 30, 2016

The Lunenburg County Chamber of Commerce will have another concert by the Little Roy & Lizzy Show.

Chamber members also voted during their Thursday meeting, at Mildred’s Meals restaurant in Kenbridge, to hire Mel Payne to organize the show and pay him a commission based on its profit.

Some had complained Payne, the chamber’s president and a concert promoter, had been paid for this year’s concert.

But supporters said that the concert was the chamber’s biggest and most successful fundraiser — and a major undertaking that saw Payne handling everything from contacting sponsors to overseeing the printing of the tickets to the set up at for the show.

The concert made nearly $5,000 and Payne was paid 20 percent of the net.

“It’s a lot of work,” said Robert Ledbetter, the group’s vice president. “This is not the way it is usually done, but it was not the way things are usually done for a show of this size.”

The fundraising committee could have taken over the project, but would have had to start planning almost immediately. Payne said he has organized concerts with the group for years and they have grown and been more successful each year.

Little Roy & Lizzy Show, a bluegrass, country and gospel group from Lincolnton, Ga., — along with its special guest the Appalachian Express, based out of the Chase City area — performed a concert May 14 at the Kenbridge Community Center.

Payne started working and organizing the concert last November before he started working with the chamber.