Oxford American gets hand from a pair of state’s finest

Mary Steenburgen met Kris Allen not long after he shot to stardom on the Fox talent show American Idol in 2009. The Academy Award winning actress from North Little Rock gave the Conway native some friendly advice: Never forget who you are and where you came from.

That advice certainly paid off - for Steenburgen.

On March 22, she and Allen shared the stage at South on Main for a fundraiser for Oxford American magazine. The restaurant, owned by Steenburgen, Ted Danson, and chef Matt and Amy Bell, has an arrangement with the magazine that is independent but mutually beneficial. The magazine lends the restaurant its popular image, and the restaurant offers an entertainment and fine food venue abreast the magazine.

Allen did most of the performing, though Steenburgen took the stage for a solo serenade, “I Choose You,” and joined Allen with her accordion for “Love in a Small Town.” She has a songwriting (publishing) deal with Universal in Nashville, Tenn., her husband, Danson told us. (Asked if he would grace the crowd with a few notes, he groaned, “Oh, good God, no.”)

“We’ve never made enough money selling subscriptions and advertising in the magazine to make our way,” says Ray Wittenberg, the magazine’s advertising director, thus the need for an event.

At $200 a ticket, the fundraiser grossed about $70,000, Wittenberg estimated earlier this week.

The magazine’s total budget is about $1.5 million, and the fundraiser was exclusively to pay for editorial content in the magazine. “It’s all about the writing for us.”

Though Steenburgen’s investment is not exactly tied to the fate of the magazine, she put the whole thing this way: “We saw an opportunity to celebrate the arts of the South, be it the written word or music or photographs or film, and to have great food as well. This was an opportunity to have both.”

Asked if Danson, who grew up in Arizona, had taken to the restaurant’s fare, she said, “He’s been eating Southern cooking for 20 years, although I think he likes Matt’s cooking [better than mine], although I make a mean chicken and dumplings that my Aunt Freda taught me.”