Johnny Cake and the Lunch Truck will be Beans and Banjos’ featured group on Saturday, Feb. 22, in the Dr. George R. Smith Community Center inside Shawsville’s Meadowbrook Community Center beginning at 6 p.m.
The facility is located at 267 Alleghany Spring Road, at the corner of Alleghany Spring and U.S. 460.
Johnny Cake and the Lunch Truck is a “newgrass/bluegrass band that draws musical inspiration from jazz, rock, country, blues and more. The group plays classics such as “Blackberry Blossom” and “Red Haired Boy,” bluegrass standards such as “White Freightliner,” and jazzier numbers including “Sweet Georgia Brown.” They do it with guitars, banjos, bass and a percussion section that includes bodhran (that Celtic drum often seen in Irish sessions).
The band has played at the Palisades, at Rising Silo, and at the Fatback Soul Shack.
According to the group’s Facebook page, the founding members — Bud, Jeff, Aaron, Beth, Tom, Jeff and Anthony — each hungered for a band that would both pay homage to tradition and to interpret that tradition in new ways that were respectful of the past with an eye to the future. One day they somehow all ended up in line together at the lunch truck. The rest is history.
Their Facebooks page says, “Each member comes to the band from a different musical genre. Rock, blues, funk, folk, bluegrass and more come together along with years of experience drawn from playing in bands in all genres. Just like soup, or chili, when you add in all those tasty ingredients, you end up with something much more than a sum of its parts. Johnny Cake & the Lunch Truck satisfies.”
Fort Vause will open the show with bluegrass and bluegrass flavored blues, ballads, gospel, novelty and show tunes.
Fort Vause features George Smith, who played banjo in the Appalachian Music Masters concert series and on recordings with Jack Hinshelwood and Buddy Pendleton; Jeff Wilcke, a doctor of veterinary medicine and rhythm guitar who also plays mandolin; and the newest member of the band, virtuoso guitarist Steven Paul, who came to Fort Vause from a Gypsy jazz band and is front man for the electric alt-country band Electric Road. Tim Thornton, who slipped onto a Black Twig Pickers recording once, plays bass and sometimes other things. Everybody sings, sometimes all at once.
Along with the music, a supper of beans, cornbread and dessert will be served. It’s dinner and a show Shawsville style.
This Evening of Beans and Banjos raises money for the LINC Letter and its LINC webpage. We hope each person who comes will donate $5 or more.
As always, Beans and Banjos operates by granny rules: No drinking; no smoking; no cussing; no spitting on the floor.
