If there are two terms no one ever expected to follow each other in the same sentence in the Upper Ohio Valley region, the two words have to be “Jambo” and “Disco”.
But here we go. There’s a Jambo Disco coming to downtown Wheeling, and the yet-to-be-named disco-themed party represents the next new event founded and presented by the same three young men – Joe Beers, Peyton Bourgeois, and Nic Provenzano – who pulled off the Jamboree City Music Fest on June 20th.
“Do you remember?” asked Provenzano while a guest on River Talk’s “Novotney Now” afternoon radio program. “That one song (September) by Earth Wind & Fire? It starts with ‘Do you remember the 21st night of September?’ … And there’s a verse that goes, ‘Our hearts were ringin’ in the key that our souls were singin’; as we danced in the night, remember how the stars stole the night away’.
“Well, that’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “But we’re going to do it on the 20th of September this year because the 21st falls on a Monday. So, we’re going to throw a disco party in the alleyway, and we’re going to have a lot of fun.”
So, wait, a disco party? In downtown Wheeling? On a Sunday? When the only open businesses between 10th and 16th streets include the Panda Chinese Restaurant, the NB Café and Newbridge Church in the Capitol Theatre?
“Exactly,” said Bourgeois. “Nothing’s open so, if we have a little something, maybe we can start to change that mindset. Who knows? Maybe some businesses will follow suit in the future when they see people bringing people downtown on Sundays.
“There are a lot of different artists from the disco era, and people still enjoy the music, that’s for sure. And know there’s been an event in the Pittsburgh area that has disco parties and the street has been packed, so I’m sure fans will enjoy it here, too,” he said. “Because disco isn’t dead, and we’re going to prove it in September 20th in downtown Wheeling.”
The city’s new “Jambo Boys” may receive most of the credit of the success for the Jamboree City Fest, but they are the first to acknowledge that they needed the seven venues and 23 performers to make it all happen.
The same will be true with the September event.
“If you’re a person who is looking to support a new disco party in the alleyway, we’re looking for bands and people with ideas on how to make the alley a really cool place with disco-themed decorations,” Beers said. “And we’ll have a lot of other activities for the alleyway and for Market Plaza like food trucks, beer sales and other drink options, and a few other surprises.
“We would love for some local artists and vendors to contact us about setting up on the plaza, and maybe there could be some live, plein air painting going on,” he said. “If other community members have ideas, we want to hear them because we’d love to fill the plaza and the alleyway with a lot of different and diverse activities.”
What’s In a Name?
The Jamboree City Music Fest caught people’s attention because of the legendary Jamboree in the Hills that took place in East Ohio for four decades, so Beers, Bourgeois, and Provenzano is searching for the perfect name for their September event
Alley Disco? Palace Disco? Bridge Street Disco?
“We’re workshopping some names because we really don’t know what to call it,” Provenzano said. “But this is going to be our next event, and even though it’s not a big, citywide thing this time, it’s going to be shrunk down and it’s going to be a really cool atmosphere built in a place in Wheeling that people may have never been to before or haven’t in a long time.
“That’s our main goal – to get people to Wheeling to see things that they haven’t seen in a while, haven’t seen before, and to just expand on how diverse and endless the possibilities are in downtown Wheeling,” he said. “If you build it, they’ll come. I got a cool team beside me, and I think we can make it happen.”
The alley, now known as Lane 7, was well traveled between October 1891 and mid-1962 because the Steel Bridge once carried streetcars and automobiles over the front channel of the Ohio River.
“And the Steel Bridge that was next to the Wheeling Suspension Bridge that’s right across the street from the Bridge Tavern,” Beers explained. “Before they built the Fort Henry Bridge, the Suspension Bridge was so busy that they built the Steel Bridge. And then they tore it down in the ’60s a few years after the Fort Henry opened.
“You can still follow the street and look out across the river by the Mull Center and see where it landed on the Wheeling Island,” he confirmed. “And there’s an old piece of the bridge sitting right there next to the Mull Center for everyone to check out, and they can see the work that’s being performed on the former Kaufman’s building too.”
The first business to open on Sundays in the Wheeling area, according to retired butcher Tom Dawson, was the former Cook’s department store in Benwood. Bourgeois believes something of the same could happen in downtown Wheeling.
“It takes people, and we picked a Sunday because somebody’s got to kickstart the Sunday campaign in Wheeling,” he explained. “If it works, great, but if it only proves we can have well-attended events on Sundays in downtown Wheeling, that’s fine, too.
“It’s about adding something new and doing something different,” Bourgeois added, “Just like the Jamboree City event, and it looked like people really enjoyed that day in downtown Wheeling.”
