Francine Marseille will soon no longer be the Executive Director of Friday After 5 after she and the FA5 board agreed to mutually part ways. Both Marseille and FA5 Board Chair Starling Lambert said the decision was a financial one.
Lambert confirmed via a phone call Thursday morning that Marseille is no longer going to be the executive director of the organization, but declined to comment further at that time. In a follow up call Thursday afternoon, he confirmed the split was mutual and cited finances issues.
Lambert said that going forward, the board is “focusing on trying to get back to where we used to be as far as financials,” adding that “oftentimes [Marseille] worked while being paid late due to the financial constraints.”
Lambert added, “Everybody loves working with Fran, we just had to make a decision. … It’s not fair to her to say [we’ll pay her] and then not pay her, nor is it fair of us to ask that of her.”
Lambert said an official statement from the board will be released in they coming days.
Marseille also confirmed her departure to Owensboro Times on Thursday morning.
“I did step away from my position at Friday After 5, mostly because financially it was a burden on the foundation,” Marseille said. “We were honestly not able to fully recover from COVID. It certainly hurt a lot of the sponsorships, but I think we’re on the road [to better financials]. We were in the black this year. I was so proud of them.”
Neither Marseille nor Lambert provided a date for when the split would be official.
Marseille did say FA5 still plans to host Christmas at the Inn, an event they have hosted the last two years in December.
She also said she will continue to work with her event and public relations company Marseille & Company Management, where she is the owner/president, to host popups and other activities locally.
Marseille was named FA5 Executive Director in September 2020 ahead of the 25th anniversary season of the signature summer concert series.
She returned home to Owensboro in 2019 after being away for more than 30 years. She began her career at a local radio station before heading west to complete her education, receiving a master’s degree in communications (TV/radio/film emphasis).
After being canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic, Friday After 5 returned in 2021 under Marseille’s leadership. In 2021, the addition of the Holiday Inn Riverfront stage created a full “mile of music” with stages spread along the riverfront.
The 2021 season also kicked off with a bang, as the Grammy Award-winning Baha Men — famous for their 1999 single, “Who Let the Dogs Out” — headlined opening night. Thousands turned out for that performance, but no FA5 concert since then has come close to drawing such a crowd.
There were a handful of relatively big acts over the last couple of years — such as All the Cool Kids (featuring members from 98 Degrees, *NSYNC, and Backstreet Boys) and Blanco Brown — though most performers have been regional artists.
Ahead of the 2022 season, FA5 announced it was “moving west” — meaning they were moving their main concert stage from the RiverPark Center to the Holiday Inn. While there was never a clear reason provided for the split, the RPC has not been a part of the FA5 festivities since that time.
As the 2023 season approached, after some negative criticism over the past few years about the limited variety of music guests, Marseille said she and the board had taken feedback from the community and aspired to provide more for everyone.
Outside of the musical lineup, several City of Owensboro events in the last couple of years were marketed as also being held in conjunction with that week’s Friday After 5 — such as the Owensboro Air Show and HydroFair, as well as a geocaching event and various car shows. However, the events were not actually hosted by FA5 and essentially just overlapped in location and time.
Even with the various changes and marketing efforts, attendance numbers are far lower than the were pre-pandemic and didn’t show much signs of improvement.
Owensboro Times has attended the event weekly to capture photos for the last two seasons, and oftentimes the crowds were sparse unless there was a specific City of Owensboro event taking place. Many times there have only been one or two acts performing at a time with a few dozen or fewer people watching, as the majority of people downtown were either in the Smothers Park area or Veterans Boulevard where food trucks and vendors set up.
The 2023 season was plagued by several very hot Friday evenings, then ended with some controversy when it was announced that local musician Colt Graves’ performance had been canceled. He ended up performing the same night as the FA5 finale — though the concert was held at the RPC outdoor stage.
