HooDoo Loungers Kicking off Sag Harbor Musical Festival’s Saturday Free Day of Music at John Steinbeck Park

Music lovers and folks who love an outdoor festival be advised! The Sag Harbor Musical Festival is happening this weekend (September 23-26) until Sunday evening at the new John Steinbeck Park in Sag Harbor and this year it is all outdoors and free. Joe Lauro of the Hoodoo Loungers who will be performing on Saturday and said he is ready to roll out his 150-year-old big mahogany Czech bass and lead the band with some original music as well as soulful classics.

Mr. Lauro said, “It’s totally outdoor event, I am on the board, as a group we all decided, we had venues booked, but we decided we are going to make it a free festival, we are going to rely on people’s generosity and we are going to do it totally outdoors!” 

He went on to say, “There will be a main stage in the new Steinbeck Park and my band, the HooDoo Loungers with Dan Koontz (guitar/vocalist) will be kicking off the 10^th anniversary of the festival, which will be the first time we are ever doing a musical event at Steinbeck Park, with us kicking it off at 11:00 AM.” 

He explained how the festival goes on all day for free afterwards on Saturday and Sunday as well. Mr. Lauro stressed that, “Saturday is the day of all the free music, meaning that it’s totally free all day long at several venues that are listed on the website.” 

Mr. Lauro said, “The stage will actually be built on Saturday morning super early, the show will be rain or shine, they will be tents if there is rain or bad weather.” 

The HooDoo loungers is a large horn band, that plays a lot of original music that’s influenced by New Orleans and classic soul. They have a new CD titled “So Beautiful,” that is being rolled out next month. Mr. Lauro said, “We will be playing sone stuff from that and then just some fun favorites, we got to get people going at 11AM! We are going to knock their socks off. We have Dawnette Darden (vocals) who is going to be really giving it out to them all with Mike Schiano (guitar vocalist) along with John Bierly on trumpet, Eric Kay on tenor sax/clarinet, with Bruce Beyers on drums. Eric Miller will be on Trombone.” 

Once again Mr. Lauro told the story about a personal highlight of his and the band. “It was at one those traditional first Sunday in August Barcelona Beach parties years back. We are all off the beach in shallow water playing live on a boat. People are really enjoying our music and the whole scene when a boat approaches with Billy Joel on board. He’s really digging our song list and for a while was actually going to come aboard and play with us, but then things just got too crazy. But he really was enjoying our set!” 

For more information check out www.sagharbormusic.org