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Patsy Cline tribute to benefit new band at Alcona Schools

Songstress Casey Makela will sing more than 20 of Patsy Cline’s hits in this tribute to the late singer on the anniversary of her 1963 death in an airplane crash.

The show is a benefit for the newly re-formed band at Alcona Community Schools. Tickets are $10 per person and everyone is welcome.

Makela will be backed by a live band in this two-hour show at the Alcona High School auditorium starting at 2 p.m. March 5.

Every dollar in ticket sales goes straight to the school band program. Inspiration Alcona, the Harrisville Arts Council and Alcona County Library are paying all expenses. Part of the money from Inspiration Alcona comes from the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts, for whose support the group is grateful.

Playing behind Makela’s vocals will be a band with local musicians Don Jack on drums, Amy Merrick on keyboards, Jim Duncan on steel guitar, Nathan Myers on rhythm guitar and Eric Dunckel on doghouse bass. Most of the group played in Oscoda last November in the Shoreline Players’ well-received show about Cline. Audio samples from that show can be heard at the website www.InspirationAlcona.org.

After six years without a band program, Alcona Community Schools began a new one in the current school year.

Ray Reynolds, recently retired from 30 years teaching in the Alpena schools, is instructing 45 sixth- and seventh-graders on two mornings each week. The schools plan to add band to higher grades as the current group of students moves up.

An earlier fundraising campaign begun by Alcona student Ben Thomas raised $10,000 that went to repair aging instruments and buy replacements for those that could not be fixed.

Cline had a meteoric career, from her discovery on Arthur Godfrey’s “Talent Scouts” TV show in 1957, where she sang “Walkin’ after Midnight,” and her invitation to Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry in 1960.

Her 1960 single “I Fall to Pieces” soared on the country and pop music charts. By the time of her death at the age of 30, she had recorded 102 songs. Seven hit the Top 10, one after her death. In 1973 she was named posthumously as the first female soloist in the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Tickets are available at the district, high school and elementary school offices at Alcona Community Schools, 736-8534, and at the Harrisville and Lincoln branches of Alcona County Library, 724-6796 cline upload

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