Menu
Feast of local rock ‘n’ rollers set Jan. 20 to raise funds for hunger
If you’re hungry for some good, old rock ‘n’ roll music, a group of Greencastle all-star musicians, calling themselves Greencastle Rockers United, will play a benefit concert Saturday, Jan. 20 at the American Legion Post on Indianapolis Road.
The goal is to raise $2,000 for the Putnam County Emergency Food Pantry, event organizer Steve Geabes said.
Admission to the 7:30 p.m. concert will be via cash donation (with a suggested donation of $10 per person). No cans of corn and peas, boxes of cereal or racks of ramen necessary this time.
Cash donations, as Geabes pointed out, mean more flexibility for the food pantry folks.
The local rockers, all of whom grew up in Greencastle although some have moved away now, will be featuring Rolling Stones music, hopefully to the audience’s satisfaction.
Expect tunes like “Brown Sugar” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” but sorry, no “Hungry Like a Wolf” for this food pantry fundraiser, that’s a Duran Duran hit.
Geabes got the idea for this venture in the aftermath of the September 2014 reunion of his old band, Big Bash, which played about 400 gigs across the Midwest from 1984-87. It was made up of Greencastle natives Geabes, Henry Thomas, Rick Rhine, Chris Kersey and Andrea (Pearl) Riesberg. All but Kersey returned for a successful reunion show at the Legion.
But because band members lived quite a ways apart, including lead singer Riesberg residing in Pittsburgh, it was impossible to continue the act while conducting their daily lives.
Enter Greencastle Rockers United.
“The idea here,”
Geabes said, “was that I don’t want to be involved in a band fulltime anymore, but I want to do something once in a while.”
He also wants to do something “musically accessible” that a varied audience might enjoy, he said.
“Originally I thought about doing the Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’ album all the way through. But then reality slapped me in the face, and said, ‘Really, Steve?’ Maybe that’s for another time. Or maybe ‘Sgt. Pepper’s.’”
He said the concept and the music might change annually as well as the cast of characters on stage as some of the local musicians asked to be involved in the Jan. 20 show were unavailable this time.
Those getting fired up to play and sing “Start Me Up” and more are Randy Albright, lead vocals; Geabes on guitar; Steve Michael on guitar; Ken Kersey on bass; Mark Minnick on drums; Tim Bitzer on saxophone; and sound man Mark Meagher.
They have all played together in some band or another over the years, Geabes said.
“I’ve played with Ken Kersey in a version of Average House Band,” he recalled. “I was in a band with Tim Bitzer when we were 12, and I was in Stiffy Green with Randy Albright for two years.”
Steve Michael, of course, has played with just about every rocker from every band that’s played in Greencastle the last 50 years.
While everybody in the Rockers United is from Greencastle, Kersey lives in Columbus now, Geabes said, while Bitzer resides in Bloomington and Albright, known as “Doc Rock” at IUPUI for his expertise on Jimi Hendrix, lives in Indianapolis. Minnick, formerly of Blues Side Up, plays in the group Nick Dittmeier and The Sawdusters and has lived in Bloomington the past 30 years.
Thus, the task of getting them all together for rehearsal “has been monumental,” Geabes said.
While hoping to make the event an annual fundraiser, Geabes reminds that the music is ”for a great cause, which is feeding Greencastle.”
He also praised Tony Sparks and the American Legion for hosting the event and “making a pretty large donation” to the cause.