Monday, March 4, 2024 at 7 PM
Wild Rose Moon’s music producer, John Bahler, brings his Stampede String Band to Wild Rose Moon for a hard-hitting acoustic performance, full of thoughtful lyrics, and powerhouse vocal harmonies. Contributing mightily to the band’s success are John’s longtime friend, Aaron Nicely on bass and acoustic guitar, and Kyle Buck on banjo and guitar. Pulling from songs off their four albums: Live at the HiFi, Three Years Waiting, Moonsville, and The Last Shall Be First, each of the players shares a song during the show with the others contributing harmonies and instrumentation. John Bahler leads off with his song, “College Success County,” sharing his wish for a county that would honor its working persons–firefighters, line persons, sanitation workers, with the same blooming pride. Aaron Nicely, introduces the next song, “What the song really wound up being was a reminder to myself–I’ve got two little girls–and I want to be around for them, so I want to take care of myself.” The song, “Take One Thing at a Time,” contains the line, “You told me always count on dyin’ today…take one thing at a time.”
At the mid-show break, host George Schricker, sings one of his originals, an early country inspired song, “Stitch Together Tears.” Accompanying him is John Bahler on lead guitar, Nathan Waddill on bass, and, on harmony vocals, Pam Hendon, Kim Morrison, Eileen Wright Morrison, and Vera Tiani-Shuppert of the Marshall County Melody Makers–which they share is the oldest women’s singing group in the state.
The “Shoot the Moon” game show follows, featuring questions biographically tied to members of the Stampede String Band. The show features two contestants from the audience, in this case, Dr. John Bernero and Dan Shuppert, answering questions about Moonsville, Indiana, WonderVu, Colorado, the Jimmy Webb song, “Galveston,” and the Indiana Fiddlers Gathering, in Battle Ground, Indiana. It’s all done in fun, and everyone contributes to the quiz.
When the program returns the members of the band talk a little bit more about their musical backgrounds and then launch into a John Bahler song, “Did Your Eyes Ever Fill with Tears.” The song evokes the marvelous influences of John’s early investigations into the music of Western Swing, Bluegrass, and the work of the Sons of the Pioneers. The last song the band presents, “The End of the Line,” is a soaring Bluegrass piece driven by John’s powerful mandolin playing – the song bounds along scraping and scratching until it subsides near the end (in a break that features the bass and guitar) and then mounts into an ever-spinning cavalcade of harmonic pleasure–crescendoing to fever pitch and leaving the room breathless. Anyone will remember, I imagine, if they were in the audience that day – it simply brought down the house—proving that the Stampede String Band is a force to be reckoned with.