Weekly hoedowns make their return

Spring has f i nally sprung around DeSoto County, but that song you hear coming from Olive Branch Old Towne beginning Thursday night isn’t from returning birds but from the return of the weekly Hootenanny Hoedowns.

“I’m looking forward to starting the picking and grinning,” says Roy Elliot, head of the committee that organizes the hootenannies, which closed down in November for the winter. “People have been calling me two or three times a day asking when are we going to get started again.”

Since 2004, a stretch of Pigeon Roost Plaza in Olive Branch’s Old Towne has been the site of a weekly open jam session that draws as many as 50 musicians a night from throughout the area. The musicians break up into groups and fill downtown with old-time country, gospel, folk and blues.

“People love them,” says Old Towne Preservation and Development Association executive director Dee Dee Erfurdt. “It’s just a laid-back atmosphere. You can eat at one of the restaurants on the square and then afterward come listen to music.”

The hootenannies run from 7 to 9 p.m. on Thursday nights through the end of June and then pick up again in September and October. Elliott says the events can draw as many as 250 people.

“It just depends on the weather and who’s in town and who’s in the mood,” says Elliott. “If it’s rainy or too cold or too hot or whatever, we’ll have it inside the music store there, Olive Branch Pickers.”

Musicians of all skill levels and styles are invited to participate in the hootenannies, with the caveat that they must play acoustic. The only drums allowed are snare drums.

At 7 p.m. the musicians are broken up into groups, usually based on genre, that then disperse around the square. Most of the mandolin and banjo players will go off with a group that has taken to calling itself the Bluegrassy Bunch while another group called the Justified Jug Band might feature a washtub bass and harmonicas.

“If we have a third or fourth group it’s usually because we have a bunch of young folks that want to play more rock-and-roll type music,” says Elliott, who usually heads a group of acoustic guitar players. “Everything’s acoustic so that way nobody overrides anybody. You’ll have a group down at one end of the street, and then there’ll be a block of open space before the next group.”

Most hootenannies are taped and broadcast weekly on Comcast Channel 19.

Elliott, owner of TSI Telephone & Data Systems, has participated in the hootenannies since the beginning.

“A lot of people just refer to the hootenannies now just as the Hoot,” he says, “and that’s just what it is. It’s a real hoot.”