The O-town Scene - Oneonta, NY
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/25742
Creative fiddler and old-time bands to play in Oneonta Music legend Richie Stearns is coming to Oneonta’s Autumn Café on Friday, March 4, with The Horse Flies to promote his new- est album “Missing.” The first time I saw Stearns was at the Old-time Fiddler’s Convention in Galax, An unplugged, acoustic version of Oneonta’s popular Horseshoe Lounge Playboys will open the show. Va. I was leaning on the warped boards of the stable, where four or five fiddlers surrounded a single banjo player. They had played all night, through the dark hours and now as the sky began to turn yellow, they were still making infectious rhythms and melodies together. The tune was mesmerizing and seemingly endless, when suddenly the banjo player let out a scream. Everyone stopped instantly and the spell broken. Stearns is a creative musician whose per- formances transcend labeling _ you just have to hear him. He’s played with numer- ous great musicians _ Peter Rowan, Vassar Clements, Jim Lau- derdale and most recently Natalie Merchant. But it is his own music as performed with The Horse Flies and Donna The Buffalo, bands he help found, for which he is best known. “I got into playing music at 14 in junior high, with a pack of like-minded hippie kids,” Stearns said. “Except the kind of music we were exposed to was string band and jug band music. Locally, there were some very active bands in these genres, while on our record players we had Lou Reed, Bob Marley, the Beatles, the Stones, Doc Watson, Jimmy Rogers, Hank Williams and the Skillet Lickers. The doors were wide open in those days.” Stearns helped found The Horse Flies, an Ithaca-based string band that landed a con- tract with MCA records and were featured in an MTV video along with rock legends of the ’80s and ’90s. “We started reinterpreting traditional compositions, adding our own music to some, changing the words in others, and eventually started writing our own com- positions,” Stearns said of the Horse Flies’ beginnings. “Eventually we made ‘Human Fly,’ our experiment in merging modern in- fluences with traditional Appalachian fiddle music. People liked that record.” Stearns and the Flies helped found the Grass Roots Music Festival in Trumansburg, where they perform annually. In the late 18 O-Town Scene Feb. 24, 2011 ’80s and ’90s, he teamed up with his then wife, Jenny (also formerly of Donna The Buffalo), while raising their two sons. In 2000, Natalie Merchant hired Stearns to help her merge her pop band with tradi- tional fiddle music. He toured with Mer- chant and 10,000 Maniacs for six weeks, including an appearance on the nationally broadcast MTV Unplugged with David Byrne and Jerry Marrota, who plays with Peter Gabriel. (The show was later released as an album and video/DVD). Local singer songwriter Randy Miritello, who will be performing with The Horseshoe Contributed Richie Stearns (left) and the Horse Flies will play at the Autumn Cafe in Oneonta on Friday, March 4, with the Horseshoe Lounge Playboys opening. Lounge Playboys to open for The Richie Stearns Band show in Oneonta, grew up in the Southern Tier region where, as with his friends of Old Crowe Medicine Show notoriety, his influences came from the in- novative Ithaca music scene. “I would say as far as old-time music is concerned, The Horse Flies took southern fiddle music to a place of funky grooves and syncopated rhythms not seen before _ completely hypnotic,” Miritello said. “When it comes to the world of clawhammer banjo, Richie is actually a living legend, I mean he developed the style of playing you hear today. He took traditional banjo and mixed it with sounds of Mali, India, The Ramones and Nashville. He is also a very gifted song writer and true gentle soul.” Stearns recently released a solo CD, “Missing,” which will be available at One- onta show. _ Will Lunn Will Lunn produces live music shows and festivals when he is not composing acous- tic music and touring with The Horseshoe Lounge playboys. He can be reached at wlunn@whatsup-ny.com.