Hey, buddy, have you heard the news? “King Mackerel & the Blues are Running” to Morehead City later this month.
The Coastal Cohorts — Don Dixon, Bland Simpson, and Jim Wann — are getting back together for a special reunion tour they’re calling “39 and Holding” of their show that celebrates life on the Carolina coast.
Sponsor Spotlight
Shows are scheduled for 7 p.m. May 23-25 and at 2 p.m. May 26 in Carteret Community College’s Joslyn Hall.
Proceeds benefit both the North Carolina Coastal Federation and the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island. Tickets, $30 for members of both nonprofit organizations and $35 for nonmembers, are available at nccoast.org/kingmackerel.
“King Mackerel & the Blues are Running” brings to the stage tall tales, ballads and stories about the one that got away — both first loves and catches.
The group first performed the show in 1985 and has toured the East Coast, including performing in New York City that the late Clive Barnes, New York Post theater critic, called “a pure salt watered delight.”
This is far from the first show the trio has performed in Carteret County.
Sponsor Spotlight
“This is the best — doing ‘King Mackerel’ again with our longtime Core Sound friends, right where we first teamed up in Joslyn Hall,” guitarist Jim Wann, who is the lead composer of the Tony-nominee and international musical hit “Pump Boys & Dinettes” said in a release.
“We love our audiences at Joslyn Hall,” said pianist Bland Simpson, who is Kenan Professor of English & Creative Writing at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. “And it always feels like a family reunion when we do this show.”
Bassist Don Dixon, renowned record producer of such acts as REM, James McMurtry, and The Red Clay Ramblers agrees. “I love doing this show in the Sound Country,” he said. “Joslyn Hall is one of my favorite places to sing.”
