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Arts & Entertainment

Roots Roadhouse II to Showcase National Headliners and Local Favorites

Musicans talk about the festival's local feel and the tightness of the Echo Park community.

There will be beer, BBQ and bingo at Roots Roadhouse II this Sunday, August 14th but for aficionados of Americana, country, bluegrass, and blues, the “American Roots Music Festival served with a twist!” is all about the music.

Headlining Visitors, Local Faves

Presented by the Echo, Grand Ole Echo, and New L.A. Folk Fest, the Roadhouse line-up is a must-see mix of out-of-town talent like alt-country headliners the Sadies, SoCal fave and dark-edged Americana revisionist David Serby and the Dirt Poor Folklore, and L.A. ex-pat/honkytonker Mike Stinson who’s moseying in from Houston, where he recently relocated.

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The local scene will be well represented with close harmony duo The Driftwood Singers, banjo pickin’ Olentangy John, and Eastside Hayride: the fifteen-strong group of musician friends organized by “shepherd” RT Valine to “play the standards every American should know,” according to Olentangy John.  Solo folk artist/Hayride guitarist Ruth Friedman Carlisle calls Hayride “a collective memory”.

Olentangy John and Friedman Carlisle have played the Grand Ole Echo as have Driftwood Singers’ Kris Hutson and Pearl Charles who describes the Sunday summertime staple as an “awesome mini-roots festival.”   “Roots Roadhouse…embodies the spirit of the Grand Ole Echo,” continues Charles, “but magnifies it to a much larger scale…with so many varieties of roots music.”

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The Echo Park Effect

All agree Roots Roadhouse feels local despite the national headliners; Olentangy John thinks “out-of-towners are visiting our country music scene in a way.”  And according to Hayride guitarist Matt Taylor “the Eastside folk scene… more or less means Echo Park. Everybody knows somebody in some other scene and they get stitched together in a way.”  Hayride bassist Brendan Willard says he “got to know these folks…through the music and shows.”

Charles, Hutson, Olentangy John, Willard and Hayride vocalist Liz Eggert live in Echo Park; Taylor is “headed back in a month.” “I certainly never felt like part of a community in this city before,” Taylor elaborates.  “It’s not easily quantifiable. The borders sort of stretch immeasurably.”  The pull of Echo Park is strong; when asked what he misses about L.A., Stinson answered “bar-hopping with friends in Echo Park.” Adds Hutson, “There is such a sense of community in the neighborhood, among the musicians and the venues, and just among friends.”

“I rarely leave,” says Olentangy John. “Honestly.”

Roots Roadhouse II is Sunday, August 14th at 3:00 p.m.at Echo and Echoplex.  Enter through alley at 1154 Glendale Boulevard.   $18

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