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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Long’s Park Amphitheater Foundation Bringing Amazing Array of Musicians to Lancaster for its 46th Free Summer Music Season.

LANCASTER, PA -- On June 1, 2008, the Long’s Park Amphitheater Foundation will unleash its 46th summer of exciting, free music on the Long’s Park amphitheater stage. The annual Long’s Park Summer Music Series will offer 13 Sundays of award-winning performers.

The 2008 season will sparkle with Grammy nominees and W. C. Handy, Living Blues, Juno, Australian Recording Industry Association and International Bluegrass Music Association award winners. With musical styles spanning salsa, Celtic and bluegrass to jazz, blues, world and rock, the lineup will also feature the annual patriotic concert, cannon brigade and fireworks featuring the 257th Army Band.
The Sunday night performances will all begin at 7:30 pm.

Opening the season on Sunday, June 1 will be Living Blues legend and multiple W. C. Handy award winner, Big Jack Johnson and The Cornlickers. Labeled “Mississippi Delta authentic” by Rolling Stone, his music was featured on the “Black Snake Moan” movie track where Johnson performed with Samuel L. Jackson. One of the few reigning masters of contemporary Mississippi Delta blues, he infuses funk, soul and country elements into the mix and delivers it like a Mississippi juke-joint show.

June 8 will be a blockbuster night as two of Celtic music’s superstars make a rare joint appearance at Long’s Park. Natalie & Donnell will pair Natalie MacMaster with her feverish fiddling and mesmerizing step dancing and her husband, fellow fiddler virtuoso Donnell Leahy.

Natalie MacMaster’s performances resound with what The Los Angeles Times describe as “irresistible, keening passion.” Donnell Leahy’s music has captured him Juno and Socan awards. The Desonian couldn’t hold back their accolades after hearing Natalie & Donnell co-perform. “A beautiful blend of music,” they wrote, “... absolutely amazing.”

The Original Blues Brothers Band guitarist will take center stage June 15 as lead guitarist in The John Tropea Band. Boasting “a splendidly full sound” and “an alluring jazz sensibility” (Newark Star-Ledger), John Tropea is one of the most admired and highly regarded guitar players of his generation. He collaborated with Harry Chapin on Cat’s in the Cradle, Paul Simon on Fifty Ways, Alice Cooper on Goes to Hell and Eric Clapton on Journey Man.

Sunday, June 22 concertgoers will be treated to Grammy nominees, Blue Highway. “The five members ... are as nimble-fingered as almost anyone in bluegrass music,” wrote People Magazine. “Why are these guys super?” rhetorically asked Entertainment Weekly. “They can make your heart soar even as it’s breaking.” No surprise, the group’s Grammy nomination for best bluegrass album is book ended by awards from the International Bluegrass Music Association.

The first month of the 2008 Long’s Park Summer Music Season will close June 29 with the Hiram Bullock Band featuring Randy Brecker. Charismatic singer/songwriter Hiram Bullock and his fun, creative blend of rock, funk, blues and jazz will be joined on stage by double Grammy winning trumpeter, Randy Brecker.

“A pyrotechnician who can play all kinds of music, from the blues to speed-metal to the fusion-funk” (monstercable.com), Bullock captured national attention as the barefoot guitar player on “Late Night with David Letterman.”

Philadelphia native Randy Brecker shaped the sound of jazz, R&B and rock for more than three decades. “A tour de force,” proclaimed Village Voice.

Fireworks, cannon and patriotic music will culminate the Independence Day holiday weekend July 6 as this year’s annual patriotic concert is headlined by The 257th Army Band. The largest community event of its kind, the family-friendly evening will be cosponsored by Susquehanna Bank. Known as “The Band of the Nation’s Capital,” the 257th Army Band traces its lineage to the legendary Corcoran Cadets of 1883, the very DC militia that inspired John Philip Sousa to compose his march of the same name. Featured vocalist for the night will be the 2006 Military Idol winner, Spc. Vicki Golding.

Regularly drawing crowds in excess of 25,000, the patriotic concert will climax with Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and a 17-cannon explosion by former Lancaster Mayor Charlie Smithgall and his “concussion percussion” team. The night will close at dusk with a spectacular fireworks display by Schaefer Pyrotechnics.

Lancaster Summer Arts Festival is founding cosponsor of the long-standing patriotic celebration.

July 13 the phenomenal hot soul songstress Ruthie Foster will perform at Long’s Park. The prodigiously gifted singer and songwriter is known for “deeply soulful vocals [that] dig into gospel and swing toward contemporary folk with R&B panache” (Austin Chronicle). Able to “wail like Mahalia Jackson or lightly touch a note like Shawn Colvin” (Chris Rizik), she is an Austin Music Awards winner.

Long’s Park’s July 20 performers, Jimmy Bosch and his 11-piece Salsa Band, dish out contemporary Latin salsa at its best. He “keeps mesmerizing ... with his high energy,” wrote Les Rivera of Latino LA. Hailed by international audiences from New York to Puerto Rico and Europe to Latin America, Bosch calls himself a “fiebrú,” an feverish salsa head. The composer and lyricist is one of the most explosive and versatile trombonists of his generation.

July 29 will shine the spotlight on one of Africa’s most popular and recognized musicians, Habib Koité & Bamada. “His reputation as a guitar player has become almost mythical,” reported The New York Times. His Bamada band — a nickname for residents of the West African country’s capital of Bamako, loosely translating “in the mouth of the crocodile” — is a band of Malian childhood friends.

Habib Koité comes from a noble line of Khassoné griots, traditional troubadours who provide wit, wisdom and musical entertainment. Surrounded by 17 brothers and sisters, Koité developed his unique guitar style accompanying his griot mother. Sometimes he tunes his instrument to the pentatonic scale and plays on open strings as one would on a kamale n’goni. Other times he plays music closer to the blues or flamenco.

This innovative approach to world music has caught media attention far and wide. Koité and his band have been featured in Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and People Magazine, on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” WXPN’s World Café and “Late Night with David Letterman.” No surprise their list of fans also includes Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt. In fact, they made a guest appearance on Raitt’s 2002 album, “Silver Lining.”

The final month of the 2008 Long’s Park Summer Music Season opens August 3 with THE WAIFS. This eclectic folk rock trio comes from Down Under, brandishing triple platinums from the Australian Recording Industry Association.

With each album they’ve released, THE WAIFS have matured as writers and performers. But it’s on the concert stage that Josh Cunningham (guitar/vocals),Donna Simpson (guitar/vocals) and Vikki Thorn (harmonica/guitar/vocals) truly connect with their audiences. There, Rolling Stone says they deliver their “intimate, heartfelt songs that move at the speed of a road trip.”

On August 10 Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers will set the park on fire. If concertgoers hear shades of Bruce Springsteen in the veteran heartland rocker, there will be no surprise to learn that Joe Grushecky began collaborating with “The Boss” in 1995 and cowrote Codes of Silence with him. “In a better world,” wrote Jimmy Gutterman in Runaway American Dream, “Joe Grushecky would live in a mansion down the road from Springsteen’s.” Rolling Stone declared Grushecky “a new American classic.”

Joe Grushecky will be joined by five Houserockers at Long’s Park: Art Nardini on bass, Danny Gochnour on guitar, Joffo Simmons on drums, Joe Pelesky on keyboards and Bernie Herr on percussion. Fred Mills praised the Houserockers for “the kind of roots-Americana classicism that John Mellencamp can nowadays only dream of.”

There will be changes in attitude August 17 when Grammy nominated, master slide guitarist Sonny Landreth takes the stage. Touring with Jimmy Buffett in 2006 and 2007 and recording with him, too, bluesman Sonny Landreth defies gravity by somehow fitting notes and playing chords and chord fragments behind the slide while he strums his guitar. No surprise, Eric Clapton called Sonny Landreth “the most underestimated musician on the planet and probably the most advanced.”

Gifted musician and songwriter Bobby Lee Rodgers & The CodeTalkers will close the 2008 Long’s Park Summer Music Season August 24 at the delightful intersection of Jazz & Rock ‘n Roll. National Public Radio’s Morning Edition” described this place as “funk and fun ... a combination of old-school rock [and] jazz.”

Bobby Lee Rodgers, the lead singer and guitarist of the trio, graduated from the Berklee School of Music and quickly became one of their three youngest professors. He had begun playing upright bass at the tender age of seven, moving on to drums before getting back to the banjo, mandolin and guitar. Inspired by such jazz greats as John Coltran and Miles Davis, The CodeTalkers are one of the few, if any rock bands whose lead guitar sound is that of an archtop jazz guitar. Even when Rodgers picks up a banjo, he plays jazzy lick on it as well.

Bobby Lee Rodgers is joined in The CodeTalkers by Mark Raudabaugh on drums and vocals and Andrew Altman on bass and vocals.

The Long’s Park Summer Music Series is produced and underwritten by the Long’s Park Amphitheater Foundation. Tickets elsewhere to see all these performers would cost more than $600, but audiences will enjoy them free of charge at Long’s Park, thanks to generous sponsors, private donors and proceeds of the Labor Day weekend Long’s Park Art & Craft Festival. Season sponsors are Belco Community Credit Union and Lancaster General. Media sponsors are WARM 103, 96.1 WSOX and WGAL-TV News 8.

Partial funding has been provided through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (PCA), a state agency funded by an annual state appropriation and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. PCA supplies funding to nonprofit, tax-exempt corporations, a unit of government or a school district with arts programming or services in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Long’s Park concertgoers are invited to bring picnics, blankets and lawn chairs to the park. A selection of food purveyors will also be in the park, offering a complete meal’s worth of family foods and desserts. Long’s Park is an alcohol-free park.

Long’s Park is conveniently located just off Route 30 on the Harrisburg Pike in Lancaster, across from Park City Center. All events are free of charge and held rain or shine, except in the case of dangerously inclement weather. Additional information and links to musical previews of performers can be found at www.longspark.org.
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