Old names and new tunes come to Crawford County stage in coming year

Five concerts planned for the next 12 months will include a singing-along with The Beatles tunes, Christmas Jingle Bell Swing and Country Music, especially liked by the community.

“We try to make all of our shows something that the entire family can go to,” said Tom Holtshouse, a member of the Crawford County Community Concert Association. “Sometimes jokingly we say you can take your daughter, your mother, your grandmother and not have to worry about being embarrassed.”

Concerts will be held in the Bucyrus Elementary School auditorium.

The first concert will be The Buckinghams on Monday, Oct. 14, which offers a flashback to 1960's music.

“This group was formed in 1966 and by 1967 they had five top hits,” said Linda Leyda of the Concert Association.

The Buckinghams broke up in the 1970s, but got back together in the 1980s, Leyda said, noting they have been busy ever since, now mostly performing in casinos or rock ’n’ roll cruises.

Some of the songs that will be familiar to the audience, Leyda said, are “Kind of a Drag,” “Hey Baby,” “Happy Together,” “I Knew You When” and “Temptation Eyes.”

“It’s gonna be kind of a big band sound because they have trumpets and trombones,” Leyda said. “This is gonna be a sing-along concert. I think the audience is definitely going to sing along with this bunch.”

The Beatles interactive experience

The November shoe is titled “Yesterday & Today,” which will be an interactive The Beatles experience performed by brothers Billy, Matthew and Ryan McGuigan.

Leyda said they decided to have the show because 2024 is the 60th anniversary of The Beatles coming to America.

“This is how the show is going to start,” Leyda said. “As people walk in, they are going to be handed this card, and they write their name on it, their favorite song and why it’s their favorite song.”

Leyda said a few minutes before the concert starts, the groups will gather the slips up to create a song list. During the show the performers will call out the names written on the pieces of paper and announce the audience’s favorite songs and why those are their favorite songs.

“The whole concert revolves around what the audience has asked for,” Leyda said.

Holtshaus said the performers supposedly have memorized every The Beatles song.

Leyda said the performersgrew up poor, but they had every Beatles album, and that was how they learned every Beatles song.

“Every show is interactive with the audience, and this one will be a sing-along, too,” Leyda said. “Our audience really likes to sing.”

Jingle Bell Swing

The third concert of the year is Jingle Bell Swing at the end of December. It will star Helen Welch, who is from Britain and moved to the U.S. a few decades ago, and the Skatch Anderssen orchestra, featuring 16 instruments.

“Helen is coming back by popular demand,” Leyda said. “It’s going to be fun.”

Holtshaus said Bucyrus City Schools gave the Crawford County Community Concert Association the permission to set up earlier for this show because so many instruments are involved.

“They were very nice to help us out that way,” he said.

Welch is an internationally acclaimed vocalist, entertainer, producer and band leader, according to a Big Wow Productions press release. She has world-class symphony pops arrangements and has performed with many symphony orchestras throughout the U.S. and in England.

Welch’s 2016 musical release “Spellbound” was nominated in the Traditional Pop category of the Grammy Awards, according to Big Wow.

Rounding out the schedule: Comedy and Country Music

The Wonder Bread Years planned for April 2025 stars comedian Pat Hazell.

Leyda said Hazell will use a projection screen showing slides and comment on how they relate to the audience.

“It’s all comic,” Leyda said. “Basically, it’s looking back at the youth of the baby boomers, again back with our people from the '60s and '70s.”

The 2024-2025 Crawford County Community Association season will conclude with The Appalachian Road Show in May 2025.

Leyda said the band is one of the top bluegrass performers.

“They would do songs and stories from the mountains of North Carolina and Virginia, and the coal mines of Kentucky and West Virginia,” Leyda said. “It will be bluegrass and folk music, some cover songs and a lot of original music.”

The Appalachian Road Show is described on the group's website as a blend of traditional Americana, bluegrass and folk songs, also offering innovative original music. The group features Grammy-winning and Grammy nominated musicians.

“With this group, we want to bring to light the culture and lifestyle of the Appalachian music we grew up in,” group banjoist Barry Abernathy said. “Appalachian music and its stories have been passed down to us, and we’re now passing our own interpretations of this to a new generation, while also shedding a reverent light on this culture.”

Membership sales undersay

The Crawford County Community Concert Association started selling memberships this month. If memberships for the previous season are renewed by June 10, holders can get the same seats.

Holtshouse said the association counts around 540 members, and they would like it to grow to about 700 as they have around 900 seats. Members come from all over Crawford County, and residents from other counties are welcome to become members as well.

“Most of our shows have people from all over Ohio and sometimes people from other states,” Holtshaus said.

One of the perks of the membership in an opportunity to watch selected works of the best artists. Leyda said to select entertainers for coming seasons she and one other organization members watch clips of performances year-round, and then select which act to watch in person.

“Sometimes the videos that you see are the best of what they have, and it’s better to see them in person to really see what’s going on, and how they relate to the audience,” Leyda said.

She said the information from the conferences goes to the association board for a vote on the final list of performers. Usually, Leyda said, preference is given to the singers because the association knows its audiences like singing performances.

“We have to be conscious of what our people want to see,” Leyda said.

This article originally appeared on Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum: Beatles, bluegrass, classic rock on Crawford concert schedule