Fitton’s Music Cafe to become a ‘musical collage’ on Tuesday

How to go

What:

Music Cafe

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 27

Where: Fitton Center, 101 S. Monument Ave., Hamilton.

Cost: Free

HAMILTON — This month, many of the performers at Fitton Center’s Music Cafe will be gracing that stage for the first time Tuesday, July 27.

The first performance of the night will be Options, a group new to the Music Cafe. They will perform an eclectic mix of songs.

“It’s kind of like a musical collage, if you will,” said Brian Asbury, a member of the group. “I’d say we’re going for a partially mechanical feel for our music, but not too robotic. We want to seem somewhat organic.”

The duo, Pat and Dinah, whose passion for music brought them together, is set to perform later that night.

“I was playing with some friends of (Pat) ... we would just play Sunday evenings, just sitting around the kitchen table with a bass player, a fiddle player, somebody playing the banjo, and at that time, I was playing the guitar mainly and singing,” Dinah Devoto said. “At one of our get-togethers, he showed up. He and I wanted to go a little further with the music, and we were both kind of on the same page about wanting to play out and offer our music to other people.”

“We started out practicing together and fell in love at the same time,” she said.

Pat and Dinah will be performing what they describe as “old-timey roots music.”

“We do a lot of old-time bluegrass songs,” Devoto said. “We do covers of Gillian Welch, John Prine, Iris Dement, Jim & Jesse McReynolds, and a few others.”

Devoto said both she and Pat Kennedy sing as well as play string instruments.

“He’s pretty much the guitar player,” Devoto said. “I do the rhythm section with mandolin and guitar.”

Jeffee Kisner, a Cincinnati musician who will be returning to the Music Cafe for a second performance, will be playing the guitar fingerstyle.

“(Fingerstyle is) where you break the clefs down so the guitar is more like a piano, where you have a rhythm and a melody going at the same time,” Kiser said. “Probably Chet Atkins would be the best-known artist who performs this style.”

Kisner will be performing a new original piece he wrote, a new fingerstyle piece and a song by The Who.

Another unique aspect of Kisner’s music is his use of looping.

“I have a small pedal that lets me record while I play live, so I can play it back and loop it while I play,” he said. “It gives the effect of two or three people being on stage, playing at the same time.”

Other performers set to play will be Jim Johnson on the keyboard and Dale Davis.