By Andrew Walsh
awalsh@wbcowqel.com
There is a special moment when the listener experiences new music for the first time – when the process goes from simply hearing to feeling. It’s either there or it’s not, that moment, and it always seems longer than it really was and shorter than it should have been.
The family group known as The Hunts made a visit to the Bucyrus Primary School Auditorium on Tuesday and left their own unique sound ringing in the ears of concert goers and vibrating in their souls. Woven into the rhythmic beating was an ancestral harmony that combined to produce that moment during their original production called “Lifting the Sea.”
The Hunts are five brothers and two sisters, hailing from Chesapeake, Virginia, and they specialize in indie-style folk music. They took the stage at the Bucyrus Primary School building in a show put on by the Crawford County Community Concert Association. The house was nearly packed, including the balcony level, to watch The Hunts perform their original material, which has received regional airplay on the east coast, as well as their take on some Christmas classics.
The Hunts worked in a number of traditional instruments and sounds as they presented Bucyrus with their version of the folk music sound. The seven siblings – Josh, Jonathon, Jordan, Justin, JJ, and twin sisters Jessie and Jenny – played music with the violin, guitar, a variety of drums, the ukulele, and the banjo. They strummed, plucked, banged, rosined, dragged, harmonized, vocalized, and dramatized. They also threw in a few spoken stories just for good measure.
The Association has been around for several decades, and its purpose is to bring high quality musical acts to Crawford County. While the shows are typically held in Bucyrus, it is most definitely a county-wide foundation. The Christmas concert has been a staple event in their calendar, but Tuesday night’s show offered something a little different. Nearly 300 vouchers for free tickets were made available to the community. All that was required was that those wishing to attend arrive at the venue with enough time to spare to trade in a voucher for a ticket. This act of reaching out to the community was made by the Association as a way of inviting them in to experience first-hand the true quality of the acts that are featured.
The Association is financed primarily by memberships. The Association remains committed to providing this county with best musical acts possible. In the past they have booked Glen Campbell, Lee Greenwood, the Lettermen, the Oak Ridge Boys, and even the Toledo Symphony Orchestra. They are dedicated to continuing this tradition.
Going forward, the Association will be trimming the season from five shows a year to four, sacrificing quantity in favor of quality. There is a fair amount of overhead in these shows including booking the act, auditorium and sound system rental. A membership drive will begin in April, and there are three levels of membership. Sustaining Members will contribute $100 per season; Benefactor Members $75 per season; and Patron Members $60 per season. Association President Chuck Jackson introduced the band on stage, and in his opening monologue pointed out the extreme value in getting four of these shows a year at $15 per show.