Marbled Meat to host house concert
Strolling down Main Street in Beacon while eating, drinking and making merry on a beautiful weekend day, Aaron Miller outlined his vision for a music series that “builds community,” a phrase often bandied about.
But he gets things done. His first show with blues guitarist Jon Shain takes place on Sunday (May 18) at an unusual venue: the Marbled Meat Shop on Route 9 in Philipstown. Miller created a logo for what he calls his “butcher block party.”
“I always wanted to do house concerts and thought it would be a bougie thing with wine and cheese for 20 friends, but my girlfriend figured that we might ruin the carpet,” Miller said.
The couple decided to hold it outside, but when Lisa Hall of Marbled Meat heard about the plan, she urged caution. “Lisa goes, ‘You know, you’ll trample the lawn and maybe affect the septic tank, so why not have it here and we can do a pop-up barbecue?’ ”
The BYOB event will raise money and collect non-perishables for the Philipstown Food Pantry. “When I heard about cuts to meals programs, I got fired up and decided that I had to give back,” says Miller, who moved to Beacon in January. “On Saturday morning, 63 families signed up to get fed, and that kills me.”
Hosting the show provides a kid-friendly alternative to live music in a bar, says Hall. After Marbled opened 10 years ago, it presented Tall County and other groups. “Now the tunes have come back in an organic way,” she said.
Shain, who lives in North Carolina, attended Duke University in the 1990s. So did Miller, a fan of the guitarist’s college band, Flyin’ Mice, which broke up long ago. “I guess I was on his short list all these years,” says Shain, who will teach and perform at the Acoustic Getaway guitar camp in Stony Point this weekend.
Specializing in post-World War I Mississippi Delta blues, Shain plays with bare fingers and often uses a thumb pick to pluck the bottom strings. Strumming is rare. Masters of this mesmerizing form seem to simulate two instruments playing at once.
After branching into jazz, ragtime and bluegrass, Shain partnered with a music publisher to release two instructional books, Jon Shain’s Fingerstyle Guitar Method and Gettin’ Handy With the Blues, a reference to W.C. Handy, author of “St. Louis Blues,” one of the genre’s oldest and most popular songs.
The concert will take place on the covered patio. Inside the shop, shelves showcase goods from local craft creators like LL Pottery and Maria Pierogi, along with Understory Market and Split Rock Books on Main Street in Cold Spring.
“We know the experience of running errands down there on the weekends, so we brought some of them up here to support other businesses and help people avoid the crowds,” says Hall.
Miller is already planning his next butcher block party. “I’m good at stirring up trouble and trying to make a difference,” he says. “There’s always a sense of community that centers on eating, drinking and music. Marbled Meat was crazy enough to let me do this.”
Marbled Meat is located at 3091 Route 9 in Philipstown. The concert begins at 3 p.m. on May 18; a $20 donation is requested.
