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A GOOD VOCAL BLEND
 BUSHELS OF BLUEGRASS: Jesse Jones and the Jesse Jones Family Band perform bluegrass and gospel Saturday. (The Observer/LAURA MACKIE-HANCOCK). By Jeff Petersen Staff Writer What do you get when you put 50 years of family tradition into a blender and hit mix? The Jesse Jones Family Band. The gospel and bluegrass band will perform in concert Saturday for the Community School for the Arts at Eastern Oregon University. The concert will begin at 7 p.m. in McKenzie Theatre on the EOU campus. Cost is $5 per ticket. Tickets are available at Sunflower Books, the EOU bookstore and at the door. This is the first in a series of benefit concerts for the Community School for the Arts at EOU. Some three to five benefit concerts are planned for the 2004-05 school year. The Jesse Jones Family Band includes an all-star mix. First, there are family friend Dwayne Boyer on banjo and sister Deborah Warburton on guitar and vocals. Then there's Deborah's husband, Larry Warburton, on guitar and vocals, cousin Ivy Kerns on fiddle and friend Luke McKern on bass. Music is as much a part of the Jones family as air and water. According to Jesse, a senior EOU music major of La Grande, his grandma, Zelma Hunt, played piano and loved to sing. She passed along the tradition to Jesse's mother, Maretta, and her sisters, Marjorie and Mary. The 3Ms would sing popular songs of the day like "Harvest Moon" and "A White Sport Coat." Aunt Marjorie would accompany her sisters on the ukulele. Then when Joneses' mom lived in Santa Fe, he and his sisters, Deborah, Vickie Williams and Shannon Anderson would sing the favorite songs of their generation, tunes from Joan Baez and Emmylou Harris to The Kingston Trio. "My sisters (all of whom were at least 13 years older than Jesse) were always trying to get me to sing," Jones said. "I was definitely the baby of the family." Jones, however, had his heart set on becoming a classical pianist. He was well on his way when he broke his arm in an arm-wrestling accident in 1995. The accident, and the way his arm was repaired, made piano feel awkward. His sister, Deborah, came to the rescue. She showed him guitar chords and gave him gospel/country/bluegrass tapes by Allison Krause and Don Williams. "I heard the mandolin on the Allison Krause album and found it enthralling," Jones said. The accident, in which the bone was set a quarter turn to the left, he now calls fortuitous, as it gave him and his arm a new musical direction. The Jesse Jones Family Band CD "Straight and Narrow" will be available for purchase at the concert. The CD includes "Thorny Way" and "Way Back Home" written by Deborah and "That Beautiful Girl" written by Jesse. "I'm very happy working with her and the band," Jesse says. "She's a very talented songwriter." Jesse's band BluePass, also featuring McKern, recently appeared on Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" on National Public Radio during a taping at Bend's Les Schwab Amphitheater. Two songs from his first album, "Here Comes the Rain," were heard by 6 million to 10 million people. The family band sound has what Jesse calls a good vocal blend that he thinks comes in part from being related. "You begin to realize how important family is." |
