Temecula goes country

By: NELSY RODRIGUEZ - Staff Writer
Opry grand by SoCal standards | Monday, February 11, 2008 11:57 PM PST ∞

More than 100 singers, actors, comedians and musicians to play at three performances this weekend

If just a rehearsal was this grand, even the performers couldn't say just how big this thing will be.

Some 18 acts spent Saturday, practicing for Temecula LIVE!, which opens this weekend with three performances in two days by a flood of amateur and professional musical, vocal, comedic and theatrical entertainers at the Old Town Temecula Community Theater.

"It's a big, loud, ball-busting show," said Amie Charney, co-producer and creative director of the program. "Temecula is the boot-stomping Wild West. There's certainly a demand here and we're happy to meet it."

During three performances in two days, one Friday night performance and Saturday matinee and evening shows, approximately 100 performers -- 30 at each gig -- will get their moment to wow the already sold-out crowds.

Along with a salute to the troops and special performances by professional instrumentalists, the show will feature longtime amateur singers and fresh voices working their way up, like Grace Richardson and Alexis Thomson. It also will offer a comedic skit put on by performers who have experienced the power of music and the performing arts, like Holly Davis and Theresa Yoder. And it will showcase local musicians who play multiple instruments simultaneously or play instruments that may have been in existence longer than the musicians themselves.

Variety of vocals

Following the standard for the regular, family-oriented Grand Ole Opry, Charney said the performances will largely be about the singing. From covers of contemporary country music to original songs written by the performers, attendees of the shows should prepare to feel the vibrations of vocals that will impress, she said.

"The caliber of talent out here is amazing," Charney said. "Probably half of our cast is trying out nationally," for performance competitions, such as the Country Music Awards.

For Grace Richardson, Temecula LIVE! is a return to the stage. The Wildomar woman said she'd sung for years with her church and then with her musician husband, but stopped when she became pregnant.

"This is my first performance since I had my son," the Wildomar woman said. "This will be the first time he'll see me on stage."

While Richardson returns to music, 12-year-old Alexis Thomson is starting her amateur career. A performer at last year's Temecula LIVE! in which she harmonized with another singer, Thomson said she was excited to perform alone this year.

"A lot of kids don't dedicate themselves to the group" she said of why she prefers to perform solos rather than sing in her school's choir. "So it's hard to be one of the only ones taking it seriously."

Ensemble of comic relief

While each of the three performances will feature different artists, "Hillbilly Holly" will come out in all. The skit written by Charney follows Hillbilly Holly, played by actress/singer/comedian Holly Davis, of Temecula, as she prepares to audition for Temecula LIVE!

"(The comedic skit) takes us one step further than just being a music show," Charney said. "Especially right now (in the world) it's been tough and we need a chance to laugh."

Davis is another performer returning to the stage this weekend after a hiatus. Starting her musical and acting career as a child, Davis found herself "playing at some bars for five people with three teeth."

After pursuing another life and becoming a mother, Davis was in the audience at last year's Temecula LIVE! and again heard the call of the theater too clearly to ignore, she said.

"Instead of being a freaking apartment manager I'm going to be an entertainer," she said. "Who knows what happens from here?"

Yoder, who plays Davis' fairy godmother in the skit, returned to the theater after experiencing the power of music through people who don't experience much anymore.

An assistant program director at a senior living center, Yoder said she wanted to participate in Temecula LIVE! after learning that the proceeds will benefit Oak Grove School, an educational treatment center that serves children who have suffered emotional or physical trauma, abuse or dysfunction through a program focused on the arts.

In working with Alzheimer's patients, Yoder said she too has become a believer in the power of music.

"Music hits such a special part of their brain," she said of the seniors she worked with. "People who haven't been able to speak, when I sing a song that's familiar, they can sing it with me."

Practice till your fingers ache

Whoever has said that playing music made famous by big-name performers isn't as hard as creating your own hasn't been on stage with the Ranch Rockers. The three men who play instruments in the band, Miff Laracy, Craig Fenton and Jamie Moyer, are actually charged with producing the sounds of 10 instruments.

Laracy plays the guitar, mandolin, pedal steel guitar and sings. Fenton is on lead guitar, banjo, violin and "if you hear choir, that's me." Moyer plays the sounds of the bass, guitar and a synthesizer.

Together, with a drummer and two female vocalists, the band plays "everything on K-FROG," Moyer said of the country music radio station.

"We just put on the record -- okay, MP3 file -- and play it until we drive it into the ground," Fenton said.

But without a bluegrass radio station in Southwest County, another band, entitled The Name Escapes Me, has less to model its sound after, and even less time practicing.

Made up of two brothers, a sister and a friend, The Name Escapes Me has a collective age that's less than some of the performers in the production.

Andrew Greenstone, 11, plays the violin. His brother, 14-year-old Scott Greenstone, plays the standup bass. Their younger sister, 8-year-old Lily Greenstone, wiggles her little fingers on the mandolin and their 11-year-old friend, Orion Johanning, is a prodigy on the banjo, they said.

They practice Saturday mornings and none of them are afraid to get up on stage in front of hundreds of people watching, they said.

While most of them picked up the bluegrass bug at a children's tent at a bluegrass festival, Andrew Greenstone was already learning to play classical violin.

"Blue grass is a lot more casual," the 11-year-old said. "You don't wear overalls to play (classical)."

-- Contact staff writer Nelsy Rodriguez at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2626, or nrodriguez@californian.com.

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