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Show SCENE The Park Record. SINGER PETER YARROW ALLEN IS MORE THAN AN IS STILL THE ACTIVIST, C-2 ‘AMERICAN IDOL,’ C-5 www.parkrecord.com C-1 SAT/SUN/MON/TUES, AUGUST 25-28, 2018 Editor: Scott Iwasaki arts@parkrecord.com 435.649.9014 ex.15713 Band celebrates a Motherlode of a career SATURDAY SERENITY Tuesday’s City Park concert will feature past members Saturday Serenity, an Alcoholics Anonymous group, is changing meeting locations. The new meeting place will be the Park City Senior Center, 1361 Woodside Ave., starting Saturday, Sept. 1. The meetings will run from 9:30-11 a.m. weekly. For information, call Theresa at 435-659-9667. UTAH VISION RALLY – OUT OF THE DARKNESS WE RIDE CONNECT Summit County, a nonprofit that raises awareness about mental health, and Taylor Hagen Memorial Foundation, will present the Utah Vision Rally – Out of the Darkness We Ride, from 12:30-2:30 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 25, at Park City Fire Station at 736 West Bitner Road. The event, which will honor those lost to suicide, will feature a barbecue lunch. Admission is a donation is $20. For information, visit connectsummitcounty. org/event/utah-vision-rally-raising-suicide-prevention-and-mental-health-awareness-august-25-2018/. PARK SILLY SUNDAY MARKET RETURNS Park Silly Sunday Market, the annual open-air green street fair, will return at 10 a.m. on Sunday, Aug. 26, on historic Main Street. The event features live music, arts, crafts, new businesses and a farmer’s market. Admission is free. For information, visit www.parksillysundaymarket.com. DEPOLARIZE NOW! MEETING AUG. 29 Depolarize Now! - a citizens’ group dedicated to helping people with very different views engage in respectful dialogue and learn from one another, will host a gathering of all political identities at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 29, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, 4595 N. Silver Springs Dr. The group will address the growing levels of division, ideological tribalism and mistrust. For information, call Charles at 435-901-2131. MEGAMIND PUBQUIZ The MegaMind PubQuiz is set to be held from 7-9 p.m. on the last Wednesday of the month at Park City Brewery, 2720 Rasmussen Rd. The cost to play is $5 for a team of five. Food trucks will provide snacks. For information, visit www.facebook.com/ megaMIND.pubQUIZ. SCOTT IWASAKI The Park Record Dana Williams, Dan Hall and Wendy Fisher had no idea of the impact their acoustic trio would have on Park City when they began playing local coffee shops in 1993. From those humble beginnings, Motherlode Canyon Band has performed at hundreds of events, from fundraisers and weddings to the 2002 Olympics, Hall said. The band has also been voted Park City’s Best Local Musician or Group by Park Record readers for three years in a row. To celebrate its 25th anniversary, Motherlode Canyon Band will perform at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 28, at the City Park Bandstand. In addition to its current lineup — guitarist and mandolinist Williams, guitarist Hall, vocalist and percussionist Nina Oyler, bassist Robert Down and drummer Mark Schumacher — the concert will also feature past band members Fisher, vocalist Erica Stroem, drummer Mark Towner Williams along with bassists Doug Willey and Scott “Dude” Dudevoir — who will join the throng for a few songs, according to Hall. “We want to first celebrate the 10 years our current lineup has been together, and then we’ll have others who have played with us come and do four or five songs,” Hall said. “Then we’ll have the others come up in the order they joined the band and we’ll tell our story through music,” Williams said. Three of the musicians are coming from out of state, Hall said. Stroem will fly in from Vermont and Dudevoir from Connecticut while Towner Williams, the son of soundtrack composing legend John Williams, will represent the West Coast by way of California. With the number of people onstage, Hall said Mountain Town Music, the show’s producers, would have a big task in monitoring the audio channels. Sketching things out While 15 musicians have passed through Motherlode’s door in the past quarter century, Hall and Williams are the constants. “Except for my marriage, the band is the longest relationship I’ve been in,” said Williams. If the name Dana Williams sounds familiar, it’s because he had another high-profile gig: he served as Park City’s mayor from 2002 to 2014 over a period of three terms. He said being the city’s chief executive and leading a local musical staple wasn’t easy. “We’ve been through some very tough things, including my being in office,” Williams said. Through thick and thin, though, Hall, who is also in another local band, Mister Sister, said the past 25 years have been “the ride of my lifetime.” “I’ve spent most of my adult life doing this,” he said. “We’ve seen the COURTESY OF MOTHERLODE CANYON BAND The founding members of Motherlode Canyon Band, from left, Dan Hall, Wendy Fisher and Dana Williams, perform in 1993. best and worst of times. We’ve played clubs, houses and fundraisers — thousands of shows we’ve done together. I wish we would have kept a diary.” Fisher, who is looking forward to singing with the band again on Tuesday, said a recent rehearsal took her back to the family-like dynamic she felt during her seven year tenure with the band. “There is still that ability to be brutally honest with someone who is try- We love what we do first and foremost, and that has made it possible for us to get through some of the hard and crazy stuff...” Dana Williams, Motherlode Canyon Band cofounder and guitarist ing to be vulnerable, and that takes a unique relationship,” she said. “It was there when we first started and it’s still there now. It’s great to be part of this again.” According to Hall, the reason the original trio started playing coffee shops together wasn’t complicated. It was because they were looking for something to do. “We went down to a jam and went every week, and we ended up finding people who liked the same kind of music we did,” he said. “We just kind of attracted characters we related to and formed a band.” Laying a foundation The three played some local jams for a while before landing a gig at Deer Valley. “Once we got that gig, our motivation changed to learning enough songs to fill in that time,” Hall said with a laugh. The criteria for the songs were simple — they needed to focus on vocals, according to Williams. “We always wanted to have singers,” he said. “Dan wanted to make this band different by showcasing strong vocals.” That goal resonated with Fisher, who, Williams said, has an operatically trained singing style. “That’s what I think was part of what was really fun about jamming,” Fisher said. “Even if you didn’t know the song, there was always rich harmonies we’d build around.” Motherlode was also unique in that all three founders were songwriters, Williams said. “From the beginning, we focused on playing original music, which was fun and super creative,” he said. The fact that the band was composed of scribes led to a feeling they could be more open in their collaborations, said Fisher. “What was amazing from a songwriter’s perspective is to come into this group of people you could be vulnerable with in terms of the messages you wanted to convey,” Fisher said. “Sometimes they would laugh, but most of the time they wouldn’t.” Audiences loved the original songs, Please see Band, C-3 |