Foot-stompin’ music highlights reunion weekend

The entertainment for this year’s Community Wide Reunion is Ellis Dyson & the Shambles, a band that brings a good time to its party music from past eras to crowds both young and old.

Ellis Dyson & the Shambles is presented free on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Centennial Stage at Oats Park. The show is presented in cooperation with the mayor, city council and city of Fallon. Food and beverages will be available for sale, or concert goers may bring their lawn chairs and coolers. After the show, a post-performance question and answer on “Continuing the Tradition of Storytelling Through Songwriting.”

On the other side of the quad, the Oats Park Arts Center will be open showing Keith Goodhart’s exhibit of “The Day The Earth Moved — Slightly” in the E. L. Wiegand Gallery. In the Kirk Robertson Gallery is Gesine Janzen’s “Regarding the Rivers.”

Over the years, Ellis Dyson & the Shambles have made waves with their theatrical live shows and dazzling musicianship and have also performed hundreds of shows throughout the East Coast and Midwest. Fallon begins their West Coast swing with performances in three other states and in Canada.

The band consists of Ellis Dyson (banjo, vocals), Eli Wittmann (acoustic guitar), Butler Knowles (upright bass), Danny Abrams (soprano/alto/baritone saxophones, clarinet, vocals), and Danny Grewen (trombone, vocals). They came together through a series of fortuitous meetings in Chapel Hill, N.C. Beginning in 2013 as a saxophone and banjo duo, Ellis Dyson & the Shambles has grown into a freight train string band with a flashy horn section.

According to Hill Country Live, “The Shambles have taken their traveling circus all throughout North Carolina and the East Coast, from the Shakori Hills Music Festival to the historic Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro and Rockwood Music Hall in New York City. They have traveled up the East Coast to New York and back and they show no signs of slowing down.”

WKNC-FM Radio calls the North Carolina group energizing: “These whiskey-soaked tunes can easily lead to some foot-stompin’ hootin’’ and hollerin’ (pardon, that’s the eastern North Carolina coming out in me).”