The Corndrinkers
WHERE: Tipp Roller Mill Theater, 225 E. Main St., Tipp City
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 23
COST: $7 adults, $3 for children 12 and younger
MORE INFO: (937) 667-3696
ARTIST INFO: www.corndrinkers.com
Some local bands manage to stick together for the long haul, but it’s rare for one to last 35 years with the same members.
However, that’s a feat Barbara Kuhns (fiddle, vocals), Linda Scutt (fiddle, vocals), Tom Duffee (banjo, vocals), Doug Smith (guitar, Dobro, vocals) and Alan Turnbull (bass, vocals) of The Corndrinkers achieved this year.
Kuhns, Smith and Turnbull sat down recently to discuss the staying power of their old-time country act and its album, “The Corndrinkers Still.” The disc, released in December 2009, is the group’s first since its 1997 debut.
STICKING TOGETHER
Smith: “We’re all good friends and we’ve all grown musically together. And none of us moved away.”
Turnbull: “Maybe we’ve been able to stay together because we’ve never done it professionally. It’s always been a hobby although we continued to perform all these years. We’ve always all had jobs so the pressures of trying to do something like this professionally would be pretty difficult.”
UNCOVERING GEMS
Kuhns: “We don’t adopt our style to fit tunes. We find tunes that kind of fit in with what we do. It’s certainly not something we work hard at, but when we come across a song we like, we try it out and see if it works for the band.”
OPENING THE STILL
Smith: “It’s been 13 years since the last record so it was time to do another one. People were asking about it, and we ran out of the other CDs.”
Turnbull: “This CD is more diverse than the last one. It spans the eras from the ’20s up to the ’50s and it’s not just one dance tune after another. There’s a lot of vocals and different stuff on there like dobro and four-part harmonies.”
Smith: “We also played a lot working up to it, and had a very good idea of what we were going to do. We actually didn’t spend a lot of time recording.”
Turnbull: “It was all done in a couple of days in sessions of six or eight hours each. It’s nice, too, because it was all portable equipment so we recorded half of it at a friend’s house in southeastern Ohio and half of it at our house. It was very relaxed and that shows up on the album.”
The Corndrinkers perform at Tipp Roller Mill Theater in Tipp City on Saturday, Oct. 23.
CONTACT contributing arts and music writer Don Thrasher at donaldthrasher8@aol.com.
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