A musical event 53 years in the making is coming Saturday, May 15, to the historic Monroe Theatre in Woodsfield.
The theater, built in 1933, closed in 1977, reopened in 2019, and closed temporarily for the pandemic, is hosting its first Country Music Jamboree in more than five decades.
Most fans won’t be seeing it in person. Tickets started selling out quickly once they went on sale at the Monroe Theatre box office at 78 E. Court St, in Woodsfield.
“The tickets are going off the shelves. It’s only five dollars, which is not a high price,” said Mick Schumacher. “Most of our shows have been free, but we’re really excited about the whole thing.”
Schumacher is a Monroe County Commissioner and member of the Monroe Arts Council, along with one of the many volunteers who comprise the staff at the Monroe.
This was supposed to be the second Jamboree of 2021—Schumacher explained the plan is to have one major jamboree per quarter—but that the Q1 Jamboree had to be canceled.
The Jamboree gets under way at 6 p.m. on the 15th with a host of performers, including: Shortline Junction, Sue Williams, Cole Winland, Gage Joseph, Jimmy Williams, Nephew Haddon, OR&W Engineer, and Kadelan Griffith, to name a few of the 17 total performers to take the stage.
It’s not the first live music show since the theater reopened. Numerous acts, both in person and live, streamed on Facebook during the height of the pandemic restrictions, have taken the stage since the 2019 reopen.
That includes both the Monroe Hast Talent Youth Edition in March and Monroe Has Talent scheduled later in September. Schumacher noted that the theater has been operating at roughly half capacity and allows those in attendance to self-distance once inside. He also admitted that there may have been a “few” more people than half capacity at the youth talent show.
Most recently, nationally known bluegrass group Crandall Creek took the stage last Saturday. Lacey and Her Attitude Band will play this Saturday at 7 p.m., with free admission.
Schumacher said for some of the smaller events, the crowd size is slowly increasing. But for those that come through the doors, it’s been a welcome escape from the events of the last year.
“What we’ve watched is it’s been a crazy world, and when the people walk through that door, they get a free bag of popcorn, a drink, free admission, and they can listen to country music, or country rock, and it can take them back.
“It’s like a sanctuary of sorts. For that two-hour time period, whatever is going on outside those doors doesn’t bother them.”
Breathing New Life Into the Monroe Theatre
During the theater’s storied history, it’s hosted live music events, comedy shows; it’s operated as a movie theater, and later an auction house and antique store.
It sat vacant for a while before Gary and Nancy Rubel purchased it with a few plans in mind. Those plans never quite materialized, and the building sat. But, in 2016, the Rubels donated the building to the Monroe Arts Council, and the group set to bringing it back to life.
Admittedly, after not being in use for so long, some major renovations were needed.
“It was shuttered for 10-15 years, and in that amount of time, there was some interior damage, the roof leaked, and there was water in the basement,” Schumacher recalled.
In 2020 alone, the Monroe Arts Council secured more than $340,000 in grant funding for renovations. That doesn’t include money from programming, fundraisers, and other means of generating funding.
At one point Schumacher explained that an architect came up to do a full walkthrough and give an estimate of what it would cost to perform a full top to bottom restore.
That estimate was more than $3 million. Not a small sum for a non-profit to generate. So, the group opted to just hit the ground running and make improvements as they went.
“My mom was instrumental in helping get it donated, but she passed way before we ever got it opened back up,” Schumacher said. “If we waited until we raised multiple millions of dollars, we’d all be dead before it opened. So, we decided to open it up and run the wheels off and have a good time.”
The process is underway to get the Monroe Theatre listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Schumacher knew that there had been some famous names come through town and perform back during the hay day of the Jamboree. But, in doing research for the register’s application, he and other members of the council uncovered a treasure trove of history.
The breakthrough came in looking through old hard copies of the Monroe County Beacon and advertisements for that week’s shows at the theater.
Mick and his wife went through every Beacon from 1938 through 1976, initially hoping to find a few famous faces.
“We saw the regularity of the shows and the different things going on, we did a full compilation of every show that was advertised in the Beacon during that time.”
One major find he came across was the Pee Wee King Grand Ole Opry tour coming through Woodsfield.
Who were some of the names on that tour? Famous country musicians like Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff, plus a then relatively unknown high-school dropout by the name of Virginia Patterson Hensley. You likely know her as the one and only Patsy Cline.
For more information on upcoming shows and events at the Monroe Theatre, visit its Facebook page linked above.
