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The Old Time Fiddlers will celebrate their 40th anniversary this year with a concert — but they don’t intend to perform.
“We’re just going to sit back and listen to some great music,” said lead fiddler Steve Jacobi, a founding member of the Wayne County-based group that is bringing in the award-winning bluegrass musicians Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper for a free concert. “We’re taking the night off.”
The anniversary concert begins at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 24 at the Honesdale High School, 459 Terrace St., Honesdale, with doors opening at 7 p.m.
“They’re a killer band,” Jacobi said of Flamekeeper, adding Cleveland as “just so magnificent.”
Indiana native Cleveland was “born blind with only 20 percent hearing in his left ear,” Jacobi said. “He first heard fiddle music at age 3 and told his parents he wanted to play ‘The Orange Blossom Special’ and bluegrass music. By age 9 he played a set with Bill Monroe.”
Now in his 30s, Cleveland is an 11-time recipient of an International Bluegrass Music Award as Bluegrass Fiddle Player of the Year. “Vince Gill says he is so much above and beyond the abilities of most people,” Jacobi said.
Earlier on Saturday, Cleveland will present a free fiddle workshop at 2 p.m. in the Wesley Room at Central United Methodist Church, 205 Eleventh St., Honesdale.
“That will be more of a Q-and-A session with demonstrations” of Cleveland’s impressive bluegrass style, Jacobi said.
As for the Old Time Fiddlers, they play bluegrass, too, along with jigs and reels of the British Isles, contemporary folk songs and Texas swing.
The local band has more than 20 members, with founding members Jacobi and Bonnie Beers-Burcher still actively playing. Other members include Craig Gehrig and Donna Gregor on guitar, Dale Teeple on piano and accordion and Judy Trudgen on mandolin plus Bob Richards, Laura Gehrig, Jean Wasman, Jay, Amelia and Curtis Brooks, Nedelya Simeonova, Cliff Jones, Krystal Whitney, David Alunni, Edward and Anna Howell, Ori Roth-Richards, Bucky Bourke, Marilou Kosydar, Margaret McCormick, Lourdes Brown, Barbara Richter, Allison Wilmarth and Carl Kubie.
The next time you can hear The Old Time Fiddlers perform live is a concert set for 8 p.m. Sept. 13 at the Sterling United Methodist Church, 567 Sterling Rd, Sterling.
For more info, call 570-575-7158 or email [email protected]