The Fling Barn began rocking again last month when events coordinator Libby Ratcliff announced its 2019 schedule, and the Saturday, July 13 concert appearance by the 18-piece Monday Night Big Band promises to be, in her words, “a swinging good time.”
Doors will open at 6 p.m. with food and cocktails available, Ratcliff said, including the popular come-back drink introduced at last month’s kick-off called “The Fling-Back.”
Bob Hinklin is the director of the Monday Night Big Band, which he said has been playing tri-state venues for the past 26 years.
“This band started as an outgrowth of a community involvement project at Anderson High School,” he said. “We played a lot of Sousa marches and things like that, and then a bunch of us got our horns out when school was out for the summer when one of our guys who had worked at Channel 5 for years said he had a six-drawer file cabinet full of big band arrangements.”
He said that was the springboard for what the Monday Night Big Band sounds like today, coupled with original arrangements from now-legendary names like Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Stan Kenton, Harry James, Les Brown and Tommy Dorsey.
“It’s amazing just to get into that same material and into the heads of the arranger and the musicians that played it all those years go,” Hinklin said. “It’s been just a great, enjoyable professional hobby for the entire band and we try to bring that fun and enthusiasm to all our performances.”
In addition to Saturday’s concert at The Fling Barn, Hinklin said the band plays at park concerts, dances and weddings throughout Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, was the starring act last year in a hangar at Lunken Airport for a fundraiser for the Honor Flight Society, and is featured monthly at Latitudes bar and bistro on Beechmont Avenue in Anderson Township.
Unlike most musicians who have their music and notes on digital tablets, he said one of the things that gives the band its distinctive flavor is the use of the original arrangements used in the 1930s and ’40s that are still on paper, combined with more recent arrangements from the ’60s and ’70s.
“We get a lot of requests for our horn section’s melody of hits from the ’70s,” he said. “People love that stuff made famous by those horn groups like Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tears.”
He said one of the things that gave former big bands their unique sound was their lead vocalist, and the Monday Night Big Bands’ Julie Stinchcomb has a way of making the music of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rogers and Hart and Irving Berlin her own.
“That music from those composers and arrangers is just priceless and timeless,” he said. “And the way Julie kisses it with her voice, it’s not surprising that at Latitudes, we have people all the time request that she do Judy Garland’s classic “Over the Rainbow.”
At Saturday’s Fling Barn concert, he said the audience can look forward to a mix of swing music with some TV theme songs, contemporary takes on the classics and some pop tunes that they can sing along with or dance to.
Ratcliff said the next major occasion at the Fling Barn is what she described as a “rock your wedding event” which will be on Aug. 3 from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., featuring vendors for next year’s brides and live music throughout the day and into the evening.
The music and event venue is located on West Berrysville Road., seven miles south of Hillsboro off SR 247 near Folsom on the farm of veterinarian DVM William Fling.
Ticket prices and event information is online at www.theflingbarn.com, on Facebook and via email at [email protected].
Reach Tim Colliver at 937-402-2571.
