By Dave Parsons
There was a time that almost every town in America had parades and festivals to celebrate holidays. Some remain like the 4th of July, Halloween and Christmas but one holiday overlooked is Labor Day. Observed every September, it used to signify the end of summer vacation from school, and that last outdoor picnic, and parade in the park. Now most schools are back in session in August, so the end of the summer celebration, honoring the social and economic achievements of American workers gets forgotten.
Paden City, WV is a town of just over 2,500 folks that looks like it is right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. And every Labor Day it is home to one of the largest Labor Day celebrations in the state of West Virginia, and probably ranks pretty high in the whole country. The biggest draw is that it is free. No charge for the kids, for the rides or inflatables, and the entertainment is free.
Every Labor Day for the last decade, the weekend is capped off by a free concert by Jimmy Fortune, a former member of legendary country music group, the Statler Brothers. When the group retired in 20 some years ago, Fortune set out on a solo path, and is a large draw wherever he goes. It is no small feat to offer a free weekend to all who wish to attend, but to also provide national entertainment like Jimmy Fortune is a testament to the sponsors who support this small town get together.
September 2, 2024 was a bit rainy and damp at 7 PM took the stage in the middle of the city park, to a full house of folks, who brought their lawn chairs and had been looking forward to this since last Labor Day. Fortune launched into One Song at A Time followed by one of West Virginia’s state songs, Take Me Home, Country Roads.
Coming off that crowd favorite, you could feel the energy surge when Fortune moved to a few of the songs that got him to this point, his self-penned Too Much on My Heart, a huge hit for the Statlers in the day, followed by the Statlers first big hit, Flowers on the Wall. Both songs got the loudest applause so far on the evening.
Fortune has several independent CD releases, and he sampled a few of each of them, reaching into classic country music like Make the World Go Away, to the pop classic Wildfire to the Christian classic Far Side Banks of Jordan. Jimmy Fortune can take a song you know by heart, and with a few tweaks, make it his own. Another Statler Brothers hit, penned by Fortune, My Only Love led into Fortune showing his band off by giving them each a song of their own.
The mega hit for the Statlers, Elizabeth, had the crowd wanting more as the set built to the bluegrass gospel classic Life’s Railway to Heaven. By this point, the show was well over 90 minutes, and the crowd was in no hurry to go home.
When the Statler Brothers had a weekly television show on the Nashville Network for 7 years, you could sense that a lot of folks in this crowd spent many a Saturday night welcoming them into their living room. There was always at least one gospel song on the Statlers TV show, usually toward the end of the hour. Despite already doing a handful in this set, Jimmy Fortune offered up I Believe, a self-written testimony song sung in his powerful voice. In something that you possibly saw in her living room duting those 7 years of Saturday nights, a lady seated with her family nearby, told them one by one to be quiet because she wanted to hear the song. By the time Fortune got to the end of the second verse, the woman had tears rolling down her cheeks, and her family went over to hug her.
Before another song he wrote for the Statlers, Fortune asked all the veterans in the crowd to stand and be acknowledged. After a nice hand from the crowd, he asked them to form a line across the front of the stage as he went into More Than a Name on a Wall. 8 or 10 of the veterans told him they had been together in the Vietnam War. The song tells of a mom, going up to the Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC and tracing her deceased son’s name, as she talks to God about him and asks if He could tell him he was more than a name on a wall. To see these gentlemen, arm and arm in 2024, you realize the sacrifice those gave who did not return. Fortune went straight into a medley of God Bless America and America the Beautiful, which by this time the entire park was on its feet applauding and singing with true love of country and patriotism.
It was good to see that this can still happen in America…..families can spend an evening together, listen to some music and have that small-town America scene, that somewhere Norman Rockwell was wishes he would have got to paint.
Jimmy Fortune Show Setlist:
1 One Song at a Time
2 Country Roads
3 Too Much on My Heart
4 Flowers on the Wall
5 Make the World Go Away
6 Crazy Arms
7 Wildfire
8 This Old Guitar
9 Far Side Banks of Jordan
10 I Love You More
11 Good Thing
12 Living My Dreams (Jennifer Rinkle)
13 I Hung It Up (Stewie French)
14 Drum Solo (Scott Thompson)
15 Holy, Holy, Holy (Clay Krasner)
16 Elizabeth
17 You’re Only Lonely
18 Life’s Railway to Heaven
19 I Believe
20 More Than a Name on a Wall
21 God Bless America/America the Beautiful
Encore:
22 One Song at A Time
