Local musician to appear for 17th and final time at Ellwood City Storyteller’s Festival

ELLWOOD CITY − Veteran local musician Bill Pate will make his 17th consecutive and final appearance at this year’s Ellwood City Storyteller’s Festival on Saturday.

Pate takes the stage at 6 p.m. for the annual event at Ewing Park.

Nancy Wallace, children’s librarian at Ellwood City Public Library and founder of the event, says Pate has performed as a storyteller, solo musician and bandleader, also serving as live audio engineer, every year since the festival began in 2005. The Beaver Falls resident also has performed his award-winning DrumTrail program at the library.

Playing keyboards and singing, Pate will be joined for this year’s show by long-time musical partners Chris Miller of Sewickley on guitar and Tom Wegman of Patterson Heights on bass. The trio will perform under the name Bruised Oranges as a tribute to the late Americana singer/songwriter John Prine. Pate said in a press release that this show of all-Prine material could very well be his swan song from live performance.

“Like George Harrison said, ‘All things must pass,’” Pate said. “I’ve played less and less over the past 20 years due to a variety of physical problems.”

Chief among those are severe nerve damage in his right forearm that left him unable to use a drumstick and deafness.

“I’m down to my last 25 percent of hearing,” Pate said. “As much as I’ve loved music, I have grandkids whose little voices get tougher to understand after every gig I play. I’ve also been finding my vocal pitch by memory and guesswork, so I’ve probably played less than 50 times in the past decade.”

Prior to that, Pate had performed thousands of times all over the eastern U.S. and the Caribbean since turning “semi-professional” in the early '70s.

“I made a living as a musician for a lot of years, but it was pretty much under-the-radar stuff. You can’t buy my Greatest Hits album anywhere,” he joked. “Being a drummer in club bands isn’t exactly a lucrative glamor profession.”

Pate recently retired from Gateway Rehabilitation Centers after founding a successful music therapy program there. He also supplemented his income by owning and managing businesses; in the 1990s, including being a co-owner of the venerable Brighton Music store, which he helped lift from debt.

In 1997, he moved on to his next endeavor, the educational and interactive DrumTrail program, which he performedover 1,000 times from Florida to New York.

“It was a pretty popular show,” he said. “There were a couple years when I gave 60 or 70 shows just for the Pittsburgh Public Schools. All that stuff goes unnoticed, though. People are always more interested in who I played rock ‘n’ roll with. B.E. Taylor was a friend of mine. I know Donnie Iris and I grew up alongside a couple of the Granati boys, but I never played with any of them. I got married when I was 19, was a dad by the time I was 20, and had a mortgageat 21. I needed to stay close to home and play as much as I could to make ends meet.”

Beaver County music fans will remember Pate being a member of bands like Herde, Hot Grits, W.C. & Gold Rush, Frenchy Burrito & the Folk Pistols and Big Jake & the Phat Cats, and co-founded LoosEnds, The Zoo, Silverado and The Skeeter Hill Band. Pate primarily provided drums and vocals for those bands, but also played keyboards and served as business manager.

More:Tour delayed, but Steve Vai, guitar god & innovator, still eager to rock you

“Skeeter Hill started a legacy 30 years ago that’s still going on today with bands like El Dorado,” he said. “But LoosEnds was the one that I remember most fondly. We were family, and we played everything from Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris to Little Feat and the Dixie Dregs. We gave a reunion performance in 2014 after not playing togetherfor more than three decades, and I’m so glad we got to do that.”

More:Getting deep with Blue Oyster Cult founder ahead of Munhall show

Although the 65-year-old Pate reports he's in excellent health, riding his bicycle 20-plus miles most mornings and traveling with Maggie, his wife of 45 years, as frequently as possible, it’s his wish to go out “with my tail in the air” as a musician, he said.

“I’m working really hard to give what might be a final performance that people can remember fondly. Chris and Tom and I are gonna enjoy it, and we hope y’all do, too.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Local musician to appear for 17th and final time at Ellwood City event