Second Concert in Ida Cox Music Series This Saturday

The Corduroy Road to headline Ida Cox Music

Festival in downtown Toccoa this Saturday

Toccoa, GA, June 4, 2012 -The Corduroy Road of Athens will perform this Saturday, June 9, at the Ida Cox Music Festival in downtown Toccoa.

The event will take place on Doyle Street in the heart of downtown, and is the second in a series of outdoor concerts to take place each Saturday night through July.

The free event is sponsored by Main Street Toccoa, and honors the memory of a great blues singer, Ida Prather Cox, born in Toccoa.

Today, Ida Cox is considered one of the most underrated female vocalists in blues history.

She was known for her urban blues style and extravagant stage shows in the 1920s and 1930s. Ida Cox had several hits, including her original material like Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues. Many of her songs spoke to Southern black women who faced both poverty and racial inequality. Born in 1896, Ida Cox died in 1967.

The opening act at the Ida Cox Music Festival – The Haynie Brothers – will kick off the night of music at 6 p.m. In addition, local restaurants will stay open late and there will be beverages and other refreshments for sale during the evening.

The Corduroy Road will begin a two-hour set from 7 to 9 p.m.

The Athens band also is set to release its newest CD – Two Step Silhouette – on June 19 and will begin a 10-day CD release tour on Thursday night, June 21, in Atlanta. The following evening, the five-member group will appear on the main stage at AthFest in Athens on Friday, June 22.

From there, the group will make a swing up the East Coast and into the Midwest, playing a different city each night, before returning to Athens.

Performances along with way will be in Charleston, S.C.; Richmond, Va.; Philadelphia, Pa.; New York City, Cleveland, Ohio; Chicago, Ill. and Lexington, Ky. They will return home on Sunday, July 1, to perform in the Athens American Music Festival at The Melting Point in Athens.

The CD release tour will end the weekend of July 6 and 7 with performances in Winston-Salem and Raleigh, N.C.

Known for its candid roots music known as Americana, The Corduroy Road feels most at home playing onstage. There’s usually plenty of dancing, clapping and smiling whenever they play.

Comprised of Drew Carman (vocals, banjo, guitar), Elijah NeeSmith (vocals, upright bass), Matt Dyson (banjo, hollow-body electric guitar), Russel McCumber (fiddle) and Garrett Chism (drums), the band has been touring in some form or capacity since 2006. One of the members, Garrett Chism, is a Stephens County High School graduate.

Their music is mostly original, but they do mix a few old standards into their live act as well.

Flagpole Magazine of Athens noted this about the band: “Fans of anything from country to bluegrass to folk rock will especially enjoy The Corduroy Road’s notoriously lively shows.”