By Kerry Kean
The Mountain Rose Concert Series returned to Kent after a lengthy hiatus with a live, in-person performance Sunday night, March 6. For many years the folk music series took place in Fred Fuller Park, but now has moved to a new location, the Standing Rock Cultural Arts center on North Water Street.
With a show consisting of six musicians playing in turn, the long-standing series made its 2022 debut to an enthusiastic audience who were apparently more than ready for the return of live local music.
The players — Robin Stratton, Ed Amann, Rick Feinberg, Steve Madewell, Bill Schilling and Andy Cohen — all brought differing approaches to the show, but there was a mainly traditional musical feel to the evening. Styles ranged from claw-hammer banjo to singer-songwriter to raw blues, and the audience obviously appreciated them all. A rousing version of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” by all the performers finished the evening in style.
There will be three more concerts on the first Sunday evening of the month in this year’s spring series, with the next show on April 3 featuring singer-songwriter Madison Cummins and starting at 7 p.m. Ticket information and more is available at www.folknet.org.
The Mountain Rose Concert Series is a long-standing tradition in Kent, going back to the late 1960s when the Hillel House held folk music shows. It morphed into Mountain Rose by the 1980s. Many of the same people involved with the Kent State Folk Festival also helped to run and performed at the Mountain Rose, drawing from the enormous amount of musical talent in Northeast Ohio.
In recent years, the concert series was booked and managed by local DJ and folk music fan “Twistin’“ Tom Ball, who was honored at Sunday’s show. Ball passed away in 2020, but the new Mountain Rose is a part of his legacy.
The Mountain Rose series became a part of Folknet in 2020. Folknet is a nonprofit educational organization that exists to nurture the development and expansion of a vibrant folk and traditional arts community of performers, organizations and advocates throughout Northeast Ohio.
