By Nicholas Blake

This Friday, May 3 there will be an Open Stage hosted by local Ken Townsend and his brother from 7-10 p.m. at The Pioneer Stage. The duo is going to take the crowd on a journey back to a simple time. The Townsend brothers are knowledgeable in the production and manufacturing of Celluloid/Shellac records from the early part of the 20^th century.  The brothers can make one sit back and really listen to the records in the fashion that people would have heard them 100 years ago. The Townsends are avid craftsman as well; they have taken the liberty of taking these old Victrola record players apart and fixing them to make them sound as close to factory condition as we would ever get to experience

Very often do we forget how difficult it may have been to enjoy music back in the early 20^th century. With the luxuries of today, it is very easy to just search a song and be able to listen to what you want on command, but 100 years ago it was a treat to be able to sit down and listen to some of the records your dad or mother may have picked up that week in town, but, as I said, music wasn’t always available they had to really wait for all the work to be done and wait for everyone to gather around then they treated it like a family event that often happened every evening.

So, we would like to invite all the students interested in the traditional ways of recording and listening to music to our Open Stage that will be very much discussion based. It will be a treat to sit back and envision how a family would enjoy some home entertainment.