Everybody wins when a good plan comes together, and an upcoming concert at McGregor Hall is proof of what happens when persistence is mixed in with just a bit of kismet.
The country music group Shenandoah is performing one show on Saturday, Aug. 15 – it’s the only stop in North Carolina on the group’s current tour, said Mark Hopper, McGregor Hall’s executive and artistic director.
“We’re pretty proud to have made this happen,” Hopper said on Wednesday’s TownTalk. The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. Persistence just comes with the territory when it comes to booking shows and scheduling performances, but the kismet part of the story is that the band’s agent happens to live in Raleigh.
With Grammy, CMA and ACM awards to their credit, Shenandoah is known for songs that tell stories like “Two Dozen Roses” and “Church on Cumberland Road,” just to name a couple.
For Hopper, “Sunday in the South” is a particular favorite from the Shenandoah playlist.
As the son of a pastor growing up in rural western North Carolina, this song resonates.
Although trained as a classical musician, Hopper listened to country music growing up. “I grew up with it…most people would never know that about me,” he said.
He remembers sitting in the family’s den, listening to the radio tuned in to a Greenville, SC station and then hearing a different kind of music on Sundays at church.
The song, he said, describes how he lived “every single week growing up in western North Carolina…Our entire world rotated around Sunday and church.”
Church was a place – besides school – where he could socialize with other kids. And folks would bring casseroles and desserts to the parsonage for absolutely no reason except to take care of the pastor and his family, he recalled.
“There’s real comfort in that tradition,” Hopper said. “It’s where values are born.”
Whether you’ve listened to Shenandoah since the band came on the scene in 1989 or whether you’re curious to hear more from a group that was part of a return to the country-western style of music, the concert is sure to please.
“Shenandoah was a bit of a return to country roots,” Hopper explained. In the 1970’s artists like Charley Pride and George Jones were embracing a “wall of sound” concept, using orchestras instead of steel guitars and fiddles to complement their songs.
When Shenandoah came on the scene, the pendulum was swinging back to that original western country music sound – getting back to its roots, he said.
Get tickets for Shenandoah online at www.mcgregorhall.org or call or stop by the box office, located at 201 Breckenridge St. Monday-Friday 1:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. The phone number is 252.598.0662.
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