The O-town Scene

Scene the O-Town Vol. 1, No. 39 www.otownscene.com 102 Chestnut St., P.O. Box 250, Oneonta, NY 13820 (607) 432-1000, ext. 255, editor@otownscene.com EDITOR Cassandra Miller ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR OF THE DAILY STAR Adrienne Wise PUBLISHER Armand Nardi CONTRIBUTORS Josh Baldo, Whitney Bashaw, Sam Benedict, Emily Green- berg, Rebecca Hoey, Thomas Hunter, Terry Ludwig, Jim Koury, Karen Miritello, Em- EDITOR OF THE DAILY STAR Sam Pollak ily Popek, Jacob Pucci, Lisa Ryther, James Derek Sapi- enza, Jenny Schlosser, Craig Schwalenberg, Mark Simon- son, Sam Spokony, Jennifer Tighe and Kristen Tomanocy. ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Sean Lewis The O-Town Scene is published Thursdays by The Daily Star Inc. Free copies are distributed throughout Oneonta, as well as parts of Otsego, Delaware and Schoharie counties. Member of The Associated Press and CNHI News Service EDITOR’S NOTE Musician Josh Ritter has a little piece of my heart now. Last Wednesday, he and his band played the Oneonta Theatre for one of the most exuberant shows I’ve ever attended. Starting off the evening was opener Sean Rowe, a one-man-band Zach Galifianakis dop- pelganger with a sultry voice, incredible guitar skills and a humorous dead-pan storytelling style. Unlike a lot of opening acts, the audience did not talk through his mesmerizing set. Then Ritter and his Royal City Band took the stage. The modest audience of 200-300 people made up for their relatively small numbers with overwhelming enthusiasm, which Ritter and his band gave back ten-fold. Ritter smiled the entire evening _ sometimes coming off as almost psychotic, but mostly look- ing genuinely happy. I couldn’t help but smile with him. By the end of the night, my hands were pink from clapping so hard and my throat was raspy from singing along to his choruses _ I wanted to give my all because Ritter and his band were giving us theirs. 2 O-Town Scene July 14, 2011 Saturday was another exciting evening of music. I went to a barn dance in Guilford on a hilltop farm overlooking Chenango County, and saw two bands perform _ Same Blood Folk and Fetish Lane. My organic-farming boyfriend knew the musicians in both bands, and our special treatment involved me getting to pull the winning ticket in the silent auction raffle. There was boot stomping (one of my new favorite pastimes), drinking of Genny Light beer and sleeping on a bale of hay in the back of a pick-up truck. In the crowd of about 75, there were eight people I knew from high school, including a Fetish Lane musician who had been my seventh-grade technology teacher. This is an anomoly as I don’t really keep in touch with anyone from high school. One of my former classmates asked me what I was doing with my life other than working. He was married, living in Gilbertsville, and had a son who was about to turn 2. The an- swer I gave to this broad question was simply, “I’m at a barn dance in Guilford! Woo!” We hugged, and I went back to dancing. This barn dance, known as Fetish Fest, is one of several unpublicized backyard summer music festivals in the area, including Vor- shtein, which is reviewed on Page 18. These are mainly known through word-of-mouth, friends of friends of friends. A music festival completely open to the public is this weekend’s Big Pickin’ Bluegrass and barbecue four-day event at the Oneonta Theatre featuring Grammy Award winners and others. As always, there are oodles of interesting things happening this week. Read on for details. And if you know of any interesting upcoming events, email me at edi- tor@otownscene.com. _ Cassandra Miller Miller is the founding editor of the O-Town Scene.

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