The often rebellious spirit of country music with its honky-tonk hymns and moody ballads echoed off the walls of the Strand Theatre Saturday night during a two-set concert by the Eastern Wing Band.

This five-piece band is an exceptionally tight group of musicians who revel in contemporary country songs and classic rock and roll tunes in an entertaining style that evokes the intimate atmosphere of a bar-room.

Originally formed in 1994, by lead singer Ricky Myers, the Eastern Wing Band came to Shelbyville Saturday night to play for family, friends and fans in a concert produced and filmed by Smashed Productions and benefitting the ongoing renovations at the Strand.

The band’s final song of the evening, a tune by Tim McGraw, was dedicated by Myers to a local woman who influenced his life:  his recently deceased grandmother.  Prior to this the band spent nearly two-hours in an extended, musically significant, romp through several styles of country  mixed with smattering of rock tunes featuring a Chuck Berry classic and two songs by Indiana legends Guns N Roses and John Mellencamp.  The band also played an original song “Overheat in a Heartbeat,” a rather haunting and lament-full ballad inspired by love gone wrong.

This band’s version of “Every Rose has its Thorns” was  particularly unique, a slowed down, countrified take on Guns N Roses which highlighted both the fine play of lead guitarist Chris Reeves and the strong vocal harmonies of Myers and bassist Johnny Ray. Equally significant was the hard, fast and crisp virtuoso guitar work of Reeves on Chuck Berry’s classic  “Johnny B Good,” a tour-de-force rendition which saw Reeves walking out among and into the crowd while wailing on his guitar.

However, the primary strength, focus and fan favorites of this band is country music ranging from the tunes of Buck Owens and George Jones to the more modern style of Brooks and Dunn.

Eastern Wing Band emphasizes the jamming aspect of country, especially in the animated fiddle and keyboard style of Preston Kerns and Myers’ tenor crooning, which works exceptionally well  on slow-ballad like tunes, where his crooning style resonates well with the talents of the seasoned musicians who make up this very professional sounding band.

“I think that the Eastern Wing Band put on a very good show and have a very good energy between them,” said audience member Stephanie Jones. “I hope they come back to play again.”

In short, Saturday night’s show was an entertaining and lively tour of country music performed by an accomplished 5-piece band of skilled musicians who revel and seem to live in the music of Good Ole Boys. It was a concert full of fat sounds, raucous energy and smooth harmonious songs as this band varied its tempo and style to fit the many moods and tones that comprise country music.

Submitted by:  Terrance Aldridge

This review does not express the opinion of the Strand Theatre.

Ron Moenter & Bob Schlick plus one bucket truck…

Strand Volunteers Mike and Whitney Richardson inventoried pieces and parts in from the Strand.  Mike is a former cinetech and understands these types of things.  Below is his discussion of what he found:

Keep It Simplex Silly

If my research is correct, thank you John Cannon, Simplex (The International Projector Corporation) began its production of projector heads in 1909.  In 1916, after Patent on July 11^th, it was outputting its Standard. 1925 saw the formation of the International Projector Corporation from mergers including the Acme Motion Picture Projector Company, the Super came along in ’28, E-7 in ’39, and X-L in ’49.  The X-L line gave way to the Simplex 35’s around 1981.

http://www.cinephoto.co.uk/complete_projectionist_1949_simplex_e7_projector_mech.htm

http://www.darrell.org/SSbody.html

Strand Theatre has one X-L (complete with sound reproducer [sound head]), three E-7’s, two Supers, two other Simplexes, and three unmarked projectors (one having the International Projector Corporation tag in the gearbox). The others are undoubtedly Simplex due to the similarities and abundance of spare new Simplex projector head parts still in their little special made printed manufactured cardboard boxes (Constant Velocity [CV] sprockets having that loving extra touch of a script Simplex stamping between the teeth lands).

Until now, I only ever serviced operating X-L’s as far as Simplexes go.  Today, Saturday 14 November 2009, I handled history that may well have been some of the first projector heads the company built.  What an honor.

My wife Whitney and I arrived with David and started our long promised inventory of the cinema equipment warehoused recently for Strand Theatre by that fine bunch of volunteers.  We got started around 10 AM and it took us until 3 PM and we barely got done.  We removed all the projection equipment tossed the obvious trash, inventoried, digitally photographed (Whitney did), categorized and put it all back on pallets keeping like equipment together and placed the pallets back keeping like equipped pallets together.  I oriented the pictures, renamed them, burned them to discs, and set about writing this missive.

Outside of the projector heads we found power supplies (one Kni-Tron), Carbon-Arc lamp houses (a Strong Excelite 135 and a couple Moguls), A tubed RCA Amp, A Dolby cinema sound processor, a box of 11 mm Carbons, three good reflectors, and oodles of spare new Simplex parts as mentioned previously (to include drive and driven gears of plastic, nylon, fiber, brass [from Edward H Wolk Company, still new in their printed cardboard boxes]), and steel.

Thank you for the honor to handle and continue in my knowledge of cinema equipment.  And from what I understand, there’s more in the attic.

Mike Richardson

Kappa Delta Phi sorority held their Snowflake Princess Contest at the Strand on Saturday November 14, 2009.   The sorority raised over $5000 from this event.   The Strand is proud the help them in their endeavours.

Platinum Seal Fine Art Auctions presented a fine art auction at the Strand on November 13, 2009.   Over 75 pieces of art were exhibited throughout the theatre in preparation for the auction.

Examples of Procured Works included PABLO PICASSO, NORMAN ROCKWELL, WILLIAM McKENDREE SNYDER, DALE BESSIRE, JAMES ABBOTT MCNEIL WHISTLER.

Indiana artists represented include GRUELLE, FORSYTHE, STARK, SNYDER, BESSIRE, HUMPHREY, VIETOR, SMIT, CLEAVER, SINNETT, PROW, JAMES, WORKING, ETCHING, KNIGHT, POOLE, POPE, BATEMAN, JACKSON, LOTICK & SPONSEL.

This was something new for the Strand, and our venue received an enthusiastic welcome from those in attendance.   For other auctions, please visit:

http://psfineartsauctions.com

Happy Friday the 13th!!   The Strand is busy.   There are several things to talk about, but one that is very important first.

When we started this project we have been always been guided by two things.  1)  Audience Safety 2) Audience Comfort.   Bob S. takes care of the audience comfort issues and safety is something that is always ongoing.   The Strand had an audience member identify a safety problem we didn’t even know we had.
The very first row in the balcony had the seats removed.  Those seats had their sight lines blocked by the rail.   Because of this it is hard to tell the last row floor.  We thought we had solved this by painting that bottom row maroon.  We found out last night that this didn’t completely work.  We visited our friend Ray Wetnight and he came up with a solution.  We are installing reflective edge floor tape on the edge of the entire step.  That is 50′ wide.   This should solve this once and for all.  This will be installed on Monday when it arrives.  Thank you to the patron who brought this to our attention!

This past week was fun.  The Veteran’s Tribute on Wednesday night was very special.  Bustin’ Loose this past weekend put on a great show.  The New Life United Methodist Church Choir sang beautifully in their patriotic tribute.

The week is fun to!   We have an Art Auction by PS Fine Arts tonight.  This is high-end artwork.  Check our web site for details. Saturday is the Snowflake Princess Contest at 1:00pm.   Saturday night is the night all you country music fans have been waiting for.   The Eastern Wing Band will perform on the Strand stage starting at 8:00pm.    We look forward to seeing you at the theatre!

We always strive to keep everyone “in-the-loop.”   This sometimes (or most times) takes quite a bit of space in these emails.  It is important to us that we have no secrets and we tell all.  This is everyone’s project and there are several things that just might be of interest to some, so we tell it all.  With that said (warning, tech talk ahead) we had a nice upgrade in our sound system this past week.
We struggle with movie sound.  The mono movies and the surround sound movies all need to sound good.   We have struggled to get this right.  Ron B. finally had enough.  He set out to fix the problem.  The biggest issue is we have no funds to do this, not to worry, Ron is a crafty guy.  In his travels last week, he stopped at every pawn shop he could to find equipment.  After looking and looking, he started to find what we needed.  In the end he bought 3 pieces of equipment from 3 different shops.  The total value of the equipment is about $1400.  We ended up paying $152, we could afford that!   The system now has a dedicated 8 channel stereo mixer in the booth.  Along with the mixer we have a digital sound processor.  This decodes the modern movies and allows us to isolate sound tracks.  The last gizmo is just that, you will have to ask Ron yourself exactly what it does.  All this pumps the signal down to our main board.   This was installed and configured this past Friday night.  He started a  11:00pm and finished at 2am.   The difference is remarkable.  While it still isn’t a new and modern system, it is very respectable for our theatre.  Thank you Ron.

Thanks for the support.

The Shelbyville High School Music Department in partnership with the Strand theatre presented the filmed interviews of Shelby County Veterans on November 11, 2009.   This was funded in part by an Indiana Arts Commission – Arts in Education Grant.