The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

Local band to play some classics at music festival

John Kogge and the Lonesome Strangers have played the festival for 20 years.

John Kogge and the Lonesome Strangers will take over the John W. Altman Performance Pavilion Thursday, Aug. 5 for the next entry in the Oxford Summer Music Festival series.

Submitted photo John Kogge and the Lonesome Strangers will take over the John W. Altman Performance Pavilion Thursday, Aug. 5 for the next entry in the Oxford Summer Music Festival series.

ENLARGE PHOTO

Photos: Oxford Music Festival

Burglaries reported in Oxford
2/10/12
Local reaction mixed on Obama’s switch on birth control provision
2/10/12
Police patrolling for overweight trucks
2/10/12
Pentagon to allow women to serve near front lines
2/10/12
County candidates seek to sway voters at forum
2/10/12
> More headlines

By Shawn Elliot Zetzer, Contributing Writer Updated 11:17 AM Friday, July 30, 2010

OXFORD — Bob Dylan. Steve Earle. The Beatles. Grateful Dead. Bob Marley. A piece of each of these artists will be in Oxford Thursday night, Aug. 5, when Oxford’s own John Kogge and the Lonesome Strangers take their turn at the Oxford Summer Music Festival.

Since the group’s inception, they have developed into a “truly entertaining concert experience” as they performed from Dallas, Texas to Wheeling, W. Va. Kogge uses exact language when describing the group as acoustic schizo folkability blues Americana.

Kogge and his band of strangers show a good mix of covers and original music that has been pleasing crowds since 1986.

“Back in ’86 I started sitting on a stool and playing Bob Dylan songs at this bar called Greek,” said Kogge. Soon a harmonica and bassist were involved. As band members grew, Kogge found himself always introducing musicians on stage.

“I started introducing these strangers on stage,” said Kogge with a laugh. “A band of strangers.”

However, some of the “Strangers” have become regulars. Thursday, Laurie Traveline will be heard singing back up, Dough Hamilton will fiddle the violin, Frank Fitch will pick the banjo and Fred Hautau will pluck the upright bass. All are Oxford natives.

One piece that might be heard Thursday was written 32 years ago on a train through India. In an attempt to save $8, he was stuck in a boxcar of 1,000 people.

“To keep my sanity I sat there and played my guitar,” Kogge said. So became “Oh California,” a song sitting between anticipation and ambivalence about heading back to a home he wasn’t sure of.

Kogge grew up in three different cities before the age of 10. He has given his career two weeks notice on a whim, and has picked up a new trade, developing Oxford Frame Makers Uptown. But the one consistency throughout his life has been music.

From the moment his middle school teacher Ms. Michaels started teaching him guitar on his Stella, with the strings an inch off the fret board, Kogge has found a passion he has shared with hometown Oxford.

Although Kogge isn’t based in music theory, he talks about being self-taught and how important the feel of the music is.

John Kogge and the Lonesome Strangers have been playing the concert since it first started on a hay wagon in Uptown Park 20 years ago, and they may appear to be a local group playing a local concert. But there is more Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Jerry Garcia and Bob Marley there than you may think.