What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/1442943
sincere, forms of performance and storytelling, [and] based around simple, straight-forward melodies and chord structures and built around the lyrics. This allows the instruments to breathe around the song and jump forward in the space between on top of a simple structure, which focuses more on the energy than intricacies. It also makes it easy to play in any setting with any instrument — keeping it simple and straight forward — with a clear beginning, middle and end without a lot of filler or deviation. Just a few chords, whatever instruments we have available at the time and a story in between. Q. What are your hopes for 2022 if (fingers crossed) we get past this pandemic? A. On top of a handful of festivals like the Ozark Mountain Music Festival, Stars and Sauce, Stomp the Mountain and Pickin' on Picnic, hopefully 2022 will get us back on the road again. I hope to start doing some more studio work on some newer songs, which may end up on another album eventually. Q. Can you direct our readers to more information about your band and where they can hear some more of your music if they don't get enough? A. Our music can be found on all major streaming platforms, chuckywaggs.com, bandcamp.com, facebook.com/Chucky-Waggs- The-Company-of-Raggs and Instagram @ Chucky_waggs. Opal Agafia Opal Agafia, featuring her mom and songwriting partner DeAnna Smith, will perform on at noon on Saturday at OzMoMu. Q. Opal, I have heard your name quite a bit since moving to this area, how long have you been involved in the Northwest Arkansas music scene? A. I moved to Eureka Springs in the summer of 2015 and began playing locally. A year or two after that, I started touring out of state as well. Q. Over the summer you did a Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn tribute show at Prairie Street Live. What did you learn from that experience and can the audience expect some of those hits at OzMoMu? A. Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn have always been heroes of mine. They are some of the very best songwriters to date. Diving into their music and practicing for the show gave me an opportunity to absorb their songs in a way that I hadn't done before. Each song has so much meaning and power, especially the ones I chose for the tribute. Some of Dolly's songs challenged me vocally, which I loved. This tribute definitely helped me broaden my vocal range and county roots. Also organizing my first one-day music festival allowed me to learn a lot about the production side of the industry. JANUARY 16-22, 2022 WHAT'S UP! 9 EUREKA SPRINGS A. While playing backup and touring in other bands, I started writing and recording original songs; performing multiple instruments and vocal parts in the studio in order to add fully realized "full band" arrangements to original solo material. I then started recruiting whatever musicians were available at any given time for live performances of these arrangements. I called it Chucky Waggs & The Company of Raggs after a nickname I had growing up, based on my birth name Charles Wagner and the idea that the band was essentially a rotating pile of leftover "used" musicians from other bands. The current and most consistent incarnation of the live band features Kyle Young on harmonica, Chris Crovella on banjo, Patti Steel on clarinet and Sebastien Bordeaux on upright bass. Q. I read that one of your favorite songwriters is Shane MacGowan from The Pogues; how do you see his songwriting influence in your own music? How do you fuse punk rock with old- timey and bluegrass sounds? A. The most direct influence of either punk rock, folk music, jugband, bluegrass, etc., with the type of music I like to write and play is the simple approach based more on lighthearted, yet Holler-folk trio Ghost of Paul Revere from Maine will headline the Ozark Mountain Music Festival on Jan. 22 at the Basin Park Hotel. (Courtesy Photo/Stephanie Parsley) Opal Agafia (left) and her mom, DeAnna Smith, will take the stage at noon Jan. 22 at the Basin Park Hotel during the Ozark Mountain Music Festival. (Courtesy Photo/Jamie Seed) See OzMoMu Page 37