![Arkansas group The Keisler Bros. Band will headline the Aug. 19 performance at the Eureka Springs City Auditorium. “You can’t miss the shows at the Auditorium,” Joe McClung says. “The musicians — mostly Arkansas musicians — will blow you away. You’ll feel like you’re there in the living room at a pickin’ party. It gives [me] goosebumps to think about.”](https://wehco.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/img/photos/2016/08/12/110292703_The-Keislers-Brothers-Band-rgb_t800.jpg?90232451fbcadccc64a17de7521d859a8f88077d)
Joe McClung grew up in a family of performers. He and his 10 brothers and sisters all played musical instruments and sang together in Joplin, Mo.
"Where I grew up, certain families played the music and entertained the town -- singing at churches and at festivals and singing at funerals also," McClung says. "It's very interesting how these little towns develop with the families that play music."
FYI
Mr. Big’s Bluegrass Family Reunion
WHEN — Aug. 19-20
SCHEDULE — Roving Gamblers, Mountain View Friends, Casey and Atta Boys, Dragon Masters, The Four Fiddlers, noon-5 p.m. Aug. 19-20, Basin Spring Park. Free.
The Eureka Springs Reunion Band with Cindy & Sallie, and Bill Nesbitt followed by The Mountain View Friends with Pam Setser, Mary Parker, Clancey Stewart, Mel Besher, Cutthroat Montana and The Keisler Bros. Band, 7 p.m. Aug. 19, Eureka Springs City Auditorium. $20.
The Eureka Springs Reunion Band, The Mountain View Friends, Buffalo City Ramblers and Jesse McReynolds with the Grand Ole Opry Players, Buddy Griffin and Corrina & Jeremy, 7 p.m. Aug. 20, Eureka Springs City Auditorium. $20.
INFO — theaud.org
Now, the small town McClung calls home is a little south of his native Joplin. A resident of Eureka Springs, McClung -- or Mr. Big, as he's known around town -- is keeping the music traditions he grew up with alive with Mr. Big's Bluegrass Family Reunion. For more than a decade, the bluegrass festival has brought musicians from all over the state, and a few from beyond our borders, to Eureka Springs to celebrate music and family.
"I wanted to do something that would be more traditional to what the old-timers played. It's my idea of what traditional music in the Ozarks, in Eureka Springs, was -- how I remember it," McClung says. "The old folk festivals used to be fiddles and mandos, but I guess as you get older, you get away from that, and I'm trying to make sure that doesn't happen."
McClung says many of the artists who come to the festival are part of his "bluegrass family," but his biological family of course shows up, too. McClung's brothers and sisters, a son in Rogers, a nephew in Fayetteville and his wife -- "She's a great entertainer!" -- will all attend the festival, really making it live up to its name as a family reunion.
One of McClung's objectives is to share the traditional music of his childhood with as many people as possible. In this spirit of sharing, the festival includes free music during the day at Basin Spring Park, "very reasonable tickets" to the performances at The Auditorium in the evening and a pickin' party each night after the shows. Everyone is invited to attend and even to join the parties each night, which McClung says will often go until 3 or 4 in the morning.
"They're something!" he says. "That's when everyone can turn loose and just play with each other. It's so amazing in fact, I put my guitar up and just say, 'I'm going to listen to this.' It's absolutely the highlight of the festival for me.
"People will love it if they come and listen. It's therapy for your ears and your soul."
NAN What's Up on 08/12/2016