The Patrick County Music Association is gearing up for its October event, and a stellar group of artists is scheduled to perform.
“This will probably be as big of a lineup of this area’s music we’ve ever had. Most are originally from this area or have family from this area,” organizer Denny Alley said of those scheduled to play at the Oct. 21 Saturday Nite Opry.
The lineup includes Marcie Horne, who doesn’t recall when music was not part of her life.
“My dad was a musician. There was just always music at my house. It was a natural transition,” she said. “They started putting me in front of people to sing at church when I was 7” years-old.
Her experience in the church helped cultivate Horne’s love of music. “The youth choir was amazing,” she said, and even now, when the church holds a homecoming, Horne performs with the other former members of the youth choir.
Horne, who plays guitar and piano, is a mainstay of the PCMA shows and various other events, mainly because “I enjoy that extra connection with my community, even though I see many of them on a day-to-day basis,” she said.
She came of age listening to southern rock legends like the Doobie Brothers and the Eagles, but also enjoys classical, jazz and other genres. “I don’t guess I have a style. It’s music. It’s what I do,” she said.
Horne also is a songwriter, and recorded a bluegrass album in 2008 tilted “Everything Blue.” Award-winning banjo player Sammy Shelor, of the Lonesome River Band, both produced and performed on the project, as did “many other world class musicians. About half of the songs on the album are original, songs that I wrote or my friends wrote.”
She plans to perform traditional songs at the show since it will have the flavor of an old style opry. Horne said she also is “real excited about the house band,” The GoodFellers, an acoustical band that features Ralph and Rex McGee Teddy Barncastle and Hershey McMillian.
Band members “grew up on their granddaddy’s knee and cut their teeth on fiddle strings,” Horne said. In fact, “the lineup that is coming across that stage, from beginning to end, is top notch. I’m really excited to be working with all the musicians that night. Every performer is going to be great.”
Roger Handy, self-described as “one of Patrick County’s peculiar Handys,” also is among the scheduled performers.
He said the bluegrass/country music bug first bit him when he was 14 or 15 years old. In his middle and later years of high school, it fell by the wayside.
“You get away from it. I started listening to rock and roll,” Handy said, adding that phase was short-lived.
“You always go back to where you belong, where you started,” Handy said. “I went back to bluegrass and in 1967 or ’68, started the New Grass Express,” which won the Galax Fiddlers Convention in 1973. “We won a lot of conventions besides Galax. We won Dublin, Rocky Mount, Gretna. We won a bunch of them. I’ve got a whole suitcase of memorabilia,” Handy said.
Also in 1973, Handy won second place in the singing contest at Galax, and also was among the founding members of the Lost and Found that same year, performing with that group several years before taking a break to get married and raise a family, he said.
After a brief hiatus, Handy returned to music with a new band – the Southern Depot, which also met with success at venues like the Harvester Performance Center and many others.
Handy, a guitar player who describes his sound as “modern bluegrass, The Country Gentlemen or the Seldom Scene type,” said he plans to perform Anne Murray’s “Snowbird,” and “Last Train from Poor Valley,” a song originally written about the legendary Carter family and the coal mining era.
“I enjoy singing. I enjoy doing songs you can understand the words to,” Handy said. “I really can’t remember when I didn’t play.”
The Oct. 21 event also will include John Garris, Jason Harris, Michael Ray Fain, Junior Cassady, Angela Hill, Johnny Joyce, Tommy Morse and Alley himself.
“Denny is a tremendous guitar player. He’s as good as anybody you’ll ever hear,” Handy said, and encouraged everyone to attend the PCMA event.
“It’s a great venue and great music. There are a lot of great singers. It’s over early, not too loud, people are well behaved, it’s a good place to go and carry your family.”
A $3 donation is asked for admission, Alley said, adding the donation automatically enters attendees into a drawing for prizes that include an oil change, $100, a Jasmine Acoustic guitar and the grand prize of the 3 day/2 night stay at Emerald Isle, N.C.
The event will be held in the Rotary Building in Stuart. An instrument show starts at 2 p.m. Food also is available at the event. For more information, visit patrickcountymusicassociation.org.
