Grab your guitar and head on down!
There’s a Hootenanny every Sunday at The Ivoryton Playhouse
If you love some down-home country music, head on over to the Ivoryton Playhouse on Sunday afternoons through September 4th.
After every Sunday matinee performance of Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash, the cast will bring the music outside the Playhouse and welcomes local musicians to join them for a real old-time hootenanny! Whether you are a guitar whizz or just like to bang the spoons, you won’t want to miss this chance to play with or just listen to these amazing musicians. The nine professional musicians in this cast are from all parts of this country and they are bringing their talents to Ivoryton for one month only in this celebration of the life and music of Johnny Cash.
Ring of Fire takes for its marquee the title of one of the hit tunes of American singer-songwriter Cash. But the show, conceived by William Meade and created by Richard Maltby Jr., drawing on a cache of Cash songs, is not a biography of The Man in Black.
In 38 musical numbers, a mosaic of American experience is pieced together in Ring of Fire, the creators say. There’s a scene about keeping the love fires burning in middle age (“While I’ve Got It On My Mind”), there’s a scene with generations of a family sharing a meal (and sharing music) in “Daddy Sang Bass,” there’s the second-act opener about life travels (“I’ve Been Everywhere”), even a section with a chain gang (“Folsom Prison Blues”).
Maltby said, “It’s about home and family and getting together and loving somebody and having a backyard and generations living together, it’s about what holds you together in the face of a hard life, it’s about the really basic family values.”
The show’s song list includes Cash’s “Country Boy,” “A Thing Called Love,” “Five Feet High and Rising,” “Daddy Sang Bass,” “Ring of Fire,” “I Walk the Line,” “I’ve Been Everywhere,” “The Man in Black,” and his final hit, “Hurt.”
Don’t miss Ring of Fire – opening Wednesday, August 10 until September 4 – and join us on Sunday afternoons for a rootin’ tootin’ Hootenanny!