The Ladies Take the Stage for Opry Night at the Pocahontas Opera House Feb 28th

Opry Night is a long-time winter tradition at the Pocahontas Opera House that has hosted the likes of the Black Mountain Bluegrass Boys, Jake Krack and the Bing Brothers, among many other beloved musicians. On Saturday, February 28^th, the ladies will take to the stage in a double bill of beautiful harmonies and foot-stomping  fun.

The first part of the evening starts off with a performer who’s no stranger to the Opera House stage – Emily Miller, Artistic Director of the Augusta Heritage Center and String Band Director of the Appalachia Ensemble at Davis & Elkins College.

“I do love the Opera House, it’s one of my favorite venues in West Virginia,” said Miller. “It’s gotta be, maybe 10 years or so of history of going to the Opera House.”

Miller has played and toured with guitarist and singer Jesse Milnes and is a lead singer and twin fiddler in the country band, The Sweetback Sisters.  This time though, she’ll be sharing the stage with her mother, Val Mindel.   A longtime musician and teacher, Mindel is a founding member of the California-based Any Old Time String Band and has taught harmony singing at camps and workshops across the US and the United Kingdom.  She and Miller have have released two duet albums, In The Valley and Close To Home.

“It is really special to be coming with my Mom, because my Mom has her own history with the Opera House,” said Miller. “She has taught many times at Allegheny Echoes and has done concerts there, and it’s fun to be coming back as a duo.”

Miller describes some of the music you’ll hear in their set.

“We’ll be doing a sort of mix of American traditional music, some country music, some traditional songs, at least one Irish song,” he said, “but it’s mostly stuff that my Mom and I have sung together.  We love to sing close harmony duets, we love to sing the heart-breaking songs that make you feel so good; yeah we love all of that.”

The other half of the playbill Saturday night is Becky Hill and Rachel Eddy.  Hill is a square dance caller, choreographer, educator and a percussive dancer.   I asked her to explain that last one.

“I grew up doing clogging and flat-footing, but I also have studied tap dance alongside Quebequois step dance and English waltz clog, so I really love the exchange of what we percussive dance traditions with music; how there’s a conversation with particularly stringed instruments,” said Hill. “That is something that really fascinates me and I’ve spent my whole life researching it; when I say research, it’s not like reading it out of a book, it’s learning from somebody or visiting or kind of just diving in.”

She’ll be having ‘conversation’ onstage with multi-instrumentalist Rachel Eddy, a performer and educator in fiddle, banjo, guitar and mandolin.

“Yeah, Rachel and I, every piece of our show has been woven together through conversation,” said Hill. “So one of us would propose a tune and then we kind of work through it and create arrangements for each of the tunes we’re going to be doing.”

“We both feel like we are collectors of fiddle tunes. Rachel grew up outside of Morgantown playing fiddle, and I grew up in Michigan, but started coming down to Augusta aged twelve. Our repertoire of tunes, there’ll be some Hammons tunes that folk in Pocahontas County will know, there’ll also be some standards.  And then, there’s just some unusual tunes.”

You can check out those tunes for yourself Saturday, February 28^th at 7pm at the Opera House in Marlinton.  Tickets are a suggested $10.00 donation for everyone 18 and over.