Main Street concert series begins Friday

By AMY SATTERWHITE / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

With 13 weeks of live musical acts already lined up and ready to go, Main Street seeks to be the place to be on Friday nights this summer.

The “Main Street Live!” concert series begins this weekend with bluegrass band Just Lookin’ Around. A variety of other types of music is planned weekly throughout the summer.

The band is making its third appearance downtown this year. Singer and mandolin player Lynn McGregor says the band began playing the Main Street venue on East Main Street in 2003 after being approached by first-year organizer Lea Chrisawn and has been playing it ever since.

“When they first started talking about playing downtown at the gazebo, she asked me if they got a program together where they had local bands come in and play if we would be interested in playing, so we said we would,” he said.

Although once much more active than they are today, Just Lookin’ Around is a part-time band whose members play songs with bluegrass and country/western overtones, such as music originally from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Alison Krauss and John Denver.

“We’ve got a touch of bluegrass, but it’s not hard-core bluegrass,” McGregor added. “When we say bluegrass, you don’t come and listen to Bill Monroe and Jesse McReynolds or that kind of thing. Our music is more of a modern bluegrass, a folksy bluegrass.”

The bottom line is for the band as well as the audience to enjoy the music.

“We were all pretty well neighbors who just enjoyed playing music,” McGregor said of forming the band 20 years ago, adding some of the original band members remain today. “We got together to play for our own enjoyment, and that’s pretty well what we still do.”

Band members are Frankie Rains on guitar, Gary Clendenon on banjo, Ron Jennings on guitar, McGregor on vocals and mandolin, Scott LeDuc on bass, and Lisha Majors and Linda Walker on vocals.

The music starts at 7 p.m. Instead of playing in Court Square due to Main Street construction taking place east of Chancery Street, the concert series will take place in the Security Federal Bank park on West Main Street this month. Sponsors of Main Street Live include the Southern Standard, Clear Channel Radio and BLTV.