Concert to benefit Arts Center strings program

Staff Reports

December 03, 2008 10:45 pm

— MOULTRIE — Local violin students will join South Georgia bluegrass band Blue Holler on stage at the Colquitt County Arts Center Saturday, Dec. 6, from 7 to 9 p.m. Proceeds from this event will be used to create scholarships for the Arts Center’s strings music program.
Blue Holler is made up of several lifetime bluegrass musicians who have been playing together since 2005. Guitar player Mike Crout is an accountant from Leesburg, Ga.; mandolin player Lamar Keen is a lineman for Grady EMC and lives in Cairo, Ga.; banjo player Alan Kaye also lives in Cairo and is director of Roddenbery Memorial Library; and Seabie Ewer, who plays upright bass, is from Moultrie and supervises the IT staff at HD Supply in Thomasville.
This fall, the band has appeared at the fall festival at Pebble Hill in Thomas County and at a benefit concert for the Florida Sheriff’s Boys Ranch in Blountstown, Ga. Blue Holler was honored to be the first performers ever to play in the new Charles H. Kirbo Regional Center in Bainbridge, a performance followed by a November appearance at the Municipal Auditorium in Thomasville.
Two special guests have been appearing with Blue Holler, this fall. Ten-year-old fiddling sensation Skylar Gandy will be on hand to round out the group’s traditional bluegrass sound. Gandy has been playing for only three years and already seems to be one of the most exciting young bluegrass instrumentalists in the state. His singing and fiddling have delighted audiences in performances with The Gandy Brothers and now with Blue Holler. The band members said they love to back him up as he fiddles “The Orange Blossom Special.”
LeRoy “Mack” McNeese, the veteran dobro player, who has performed on the Andy Griffith Show with a California group called The Kentucky Colonels, is a perennial visitor to this part of the country due to family ties. Whenever he comes, he throws in with Blue Holler as a guest artist. McNeese plays a number of bluegrass classics on his signature model dobro and does a few humorous songs as well.
Blue Holler’s web site is found at www.bluehollerband.com, and the band has posted quite a few photos from previous outings there.
The band is planning to play several tunes with student fiddlers along with many of the favorites of loyal Blue Holler followers. Tickets are available now at the Arts Center. Please call the Arts Center at 985-1922 for additional information. The Colquitt County Arts Center is located at 401 Seventh Ave. S.W. in Moultrie.