This weekend will be one of the busiest of the entire year.\u00a0 Friday night, a sold-out house will welcome those singing cowboys, \u201cRiders in the Sky\u201d, as they salute the King of the Cowboys, Roy Rogers.<\/p>\n
This talented quartet of cowboys has been doing Western music and comedy the \u201cCowboy Way\u201d since 1977. I got re-introduced to them nearly two years ago when they were hosting the Grand Ole\u2019 Opry.\u00a0 We were fortunate to be sitting on the stage, and as they walked off the stage to give way to singer Alison Krauss, I re-introduced myself to these Cowboys and asked if they would like to come to Van Wert, Ohio (again).\u00a0 Now, nearly two years later, they will take our stage to a sold-out crowd.<\/p>\n
They had performed in Fountain Park nearly 12 years ago.\u00a0Hot off their recording for the movie Toy Story<\/em> (remember \u201cWoody\u2019s Roundup?\u201d) they came to be a part of our Fountain Park Summer Music Series.\u00a0Their new show features a salute to Roy Rogers and involves film clips and other material that lends itself to be more effective indoors.\u00a0Riders in the Sky is the only group given permission by the Roy Rogers estate to show clips of his movies for the public.<\/p>\n Although we don\u2019t have any seats to sell in advance for the Riders in the Sky concert on Friday, there could be a handful become available that night.\u00a0 The box office opens at 6:30 p.m. when the Grand Lobby opens.\u00a0If you want to get in, you might be first in line and take advantage of this opportunity, if it comes available. I hope to see you \u2018round the campfire Friday night!<\/p>\n After we clean the stage and house from the Riders in the Sky concert (I hope their horses don\u2019t leave us a mess), we will start preparing for a big daytime event at the Niswonger.\u00a0We call it \u201cVan Wert Blooms.\u201d\u00a0 It is a joint venture with the Master Gardeners of Van Wert and features five outstanding speakers on many gardening topics.<\/p>\n The featured speaker is P. Allen Smith of PBS TV\u2019s long running show: \u201cGarden Home\u201d.\u00a0 P. Allen leads off the day with an hour-long fascinating talk and slide show presentation at 9 a.m. Saturday.\u00a0He will sign books in the lobby following his presentation.<\/p>\n Other outstanding speakers throughout the day are Irvine Etienne, who works at the Indianapolis Museum of Art designing and maintaining its plant and garden areas.\u00a0Amanda Thomsen is another speaker who comes from Chicago, where she is a landscaper and author of several books, including Grocery Gardening<\/em>. Barbara Wise is from Nashville, where she also writes for magazines and recently published her first book Container Gardening for All Seasons<\/em>. Maria Zampini is an author, speaker and consultant for garden related products for plant development for the Agricola Management Group, the exclusive licensee of the HGTV Home Plant collection.\u00a0Lastly, Pam Bennett is the State Master Gardener volunteer coordinator and horticulture educator and director for The Ohio State University.<\/p>\n The day will be filled with education and fun facts for anyone interested in gardening and landscape work; from the beginner to the expert!\u00a0 Due to the enormous response to this event, we have opened seating in the balcony for a reduced cost to just the lectures.\u00a0Call the box office for details.<\/p>\n We at the Niswonger have been privileged to work with Mrs. Louise Hartwig and an outstanding committee of Master Gardeners from Van Wert County.\u00a0They have organized this wonderful event and should be thanked for their tireless efforts in putting this together.<\/p>\n We then clean the dirt off the floors and stage to make way for the very popular Texas Tenors.\u00a0These three singers have been sold out at the Niswonger since last fall.\u00a0They will present a 3 p.m. Sunday matinee concert to finish off our 2015-16 Community Concert Series. \u00a0What a way to go out: A sold-out show featuring the Texas Tenors, fresh off an Emmy Award-winning PBS special and many successful national tours.\u00a0These three guys are not only outstanding singers, but also great entertainers.<\/p>\n As a special thanks, we are holding a pre-concert reception in the First Federal Lecture Hall for all extra supporters of this year\u2019s Community Concert Series.\u00a0Flour Loves Sugar and Brewed Expressions will provide the goodies to enjoy before the concert.\u00a0This begins at 2 p.m. when the lobby opens. This extra support helps keep our series as affordable as possible and we want to show our appreciation to these fine folks.<\/p>\n Then, just before we begin the Texas Tenors concert, we will unveil our new Community Concert Series for 2016-17.\u00a0A preview video and recognition of our sponsors will take the stage.\u00a0 I can\u2019t wait to let you know who we have on next year\u2019s series.\u00a0One of my all-time favorites will be coming to the Niswonger!\u00a0No doubt you will have favorites too!\u00a0 I invite you to come to this exciting announcement and spectacular show with the Texas Tenors.<\/p>\n A big weekend?\u00a0You betcha!<\/p>\n FIN\u00c9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This weekend will be one of the busiest of the entire year.\u00a0 Friday night, a sold-out house will welcome those singing cowboys, \u201cRiders in the Sky\u201d, as they salute the King of the Cowboys, Roy Rogers. This talented quartet of cowboys has been doing Western music and comedy the \u201cCowboy Way\u201d since 1977. I got […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-03 22:31:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}