5/14/97

Contact: Tim Hogan, Ohio University, 614/593-4056

ATHENS, Ohio -- The fourth annual GuitarFest is set for Friday and Saturday, May 16 and 17, from 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. in the Front Room Campus Coffeehouse and the Baker Center Ballroom on the Athens campus of Ohio University.

Tickets are on sale at the Front Room Campus Coffeehouse at $15 for all shows, $12 for Friday and $8 for Saturday. On Friday in the Baker Center Ballroom, Pete Anderson, rated among the top 100 guitarists in the world, opens at 8:30 p.m. Known primarily for his work as lead guitar player, arranger, and producer with country music star Dwight Yoakam, Anderson in 1996 formed Little Dog Records and released his first solo album, "Working Class."

Anderson forges an amalgam of blues, country, rock and jazz in his original songs and re-castings of well- selected cover tunes. Fellow Little Dog label-mates singer-songwriter Jeff Finlin and the West-Coast duo The Lonesome Strangers will join Anderson. They will be backed up by Jim Christie (drums), Taras Prodaniuk (bass), and Skip Edwards (keyboards), the same musicians who back up and record with Dwight Yoakam.

On Saturday in the Front Room, Bill Dutcher, a versatile six-stringer, known mainly as the lead guitarist for The Crunch, plays original acoustic tunes combining jazz, classical, Celtic, and folk. Following Dutcher, Billy Van Riper, who spent many years in Athens playing jazz guitar, joins locals Dave Borowski (bass), Bernie Nau (keyboards), and Gay Dalzell. A long-time favorite performing with McGuffy Lane, Garry Efaw will appear to show off his mastering of Chet Atkins-style picking and fret-work. The Johnny Borchard Band, offering classic Texas-tone tunes, backed by the local Wingnuts, will close out the Saturday show. A Saturday 4-6 p.m. show on the Howard Hall lot across from Baker Center will feature three local guitar players -- country-funk finger-picker, Catfish; altered-tuning pop-song twister, John Horn, and acoustic-folk guitarist Bruce Dalzell.