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It might feel a little like old-home week for this year's A Day in the Country event, presented by WHKO-FM (99.1) on Saturday at Thomas Cloud Park in Huber Heights.
The 17th annual daylong music festival features a lineup of performers who are all pretty familiar with the area.
The opening act, the Dan Varner Band, is a Cincinnati-based outfit that won this year's 99.1 Battle of the Bands contest, earning the right to kick off Saturday's show. The group, led by singer, songwriter and guitarist Varner, is well-known throughout southwest Ohio and its neighboring states as a versatile country music ensemble. The band is rounded out by Brad Kelly on lead guitar, Chris Perault on bass, Ry Stephenson on drums and David Faul on keyboards.
Next up is Middletown native Felicia King. Now based out of Nashville, where she is pursuing her dream as a country music star, King recently released her debut album, "It's a Girl Thing."
She wrote or co-wrote every song on the album.
"I write about personal experience close to my heart. Songs that touch my soul," she says on her MySpace page.
Her mother, Cindy King, who still lives in Middletown, says Felicia King was singing before she went to school. "She sang more than she talked."
Following King's set Saturday will be the popular regional band McGuffey Lane, a country-rock outfit that got its start in Columbus and Athens in the late 1970s.
The group, which in the 1980s toured with the likes of the Charlie Daniels Band and the Allman Brothers, so impressed last year's Day in the Country crowd that organizers invited the guys back for another set.
Another country-rock band follows on Saturday's bill. Confederate Railroad had its beginnings a little farther away, in Atlanta. But the group, which had several hit singles in the 1990s, spent its early days as the backup band for Ohio native Johnny Paycheck.
Headlining the day's entertainment will be Grammy Award winning singer John Michael Montgomery.
Montgomery, who has had 15 No. 1 country hit songs since his national debut in the early 1990s, won't have far to travel for the show. He makes his home in northern Kentucky, close to his birthplace of Danville and near his early honky-tonk stomping grounds in Lexington.
Popular releases include "I Swear," "Be My Baby Tonight," "I Can Love You Like That," "Sold (the Grundy County Auction Incident)," "Rope the Moon" and "Life's a Dance,"
His most recent single, the heartfelt "Letters From Home," reached No. 5 on Billboard's country singles chart.
"I've been singing since I was a kid, and I would've hated to see it come and go all at once," he says in his official bio. "I've been very fortunate to have a lot of peaks and valleys in my career. I've seen a lot of changes since 1992. The main thing I've learned is to just be myself, to treat people kindly, and if you give radio a good song, they'll play it. I know how lucky it is to be successful in this business, and I've always tried to let the fans, the deejays and the people I work with how much I appreciate them."
Listener appreciation is the reason A Day in the Country was founded and has continued for 17 installations. In addition to the music, country fans will find a full day of activities for the whole family, including carnival rides, merchandise booths and a variety of food vendors. - Dayton Daily News
Discography
"Real American Girl"
"He's Just A Boy"
"I'm On Your Radio"
Photos
Bio
New artists arrive in Nashville everyday. To stand apart from the rest, one must have not only an A-list voice but also the ability to write songs and entertain thousands. Most come up short, but it’s at these things that Felicia King excels.
Middletown, Ohio native Felicia Fay King discovered her passion for country music at age five. “She sung more than she talked,” says her mother. “The radio was her Sesame Street.”
It didn’t take long for Felicia to move onto crafting her own songs, “I write about personal experiences close to my heart, and try to write at least one song a day” says Felicia. “Every lyric is like another brick in the wall to my soul.”
Felicia is no stranger to the stage, having performed with many of Nashville’s top performers and songwriters like John Michael Montgomery, Confederate Railroad, Taylor Swift, Jake Owen, Blain Larson, Trent Tomlinson, Jason Aldean and more.
And people have responded, which has resulted in Felicia at times performing in front of tens of thousands. She is one of the top unsigned country artists on myspace. With nearly 300,000 hits on her website, over ONE MILLION hits on her myspace page, and over 1,000 plays per day, Felicia is well on her way to stardom.
"I can't see myself doing anything else,” says Felicia. “I'm an entertainer and always will be”
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