Hurricane Arthur leaves Rockingham alone, lets The Sand Band play on
By Kevin Spradlin
PeeDeePost.com
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ROCKINGHAM — You can take the girl out of New York, but you can’t take the New York out of the girl.
Within a moment of talking with Angela DePietro, one can quickly determine she is not from here. But boy does she fit in. Down here it’s called the shag. Up north, DePietro said it’s the “New York Hustle.”
Truly, she doesn’t care what you call it. If the music’s playing — and it was, live, Thursday night by The Sand Band at Cole Plaza in Rockingham — DePietro is moving. She thinks others should, too. The Wadesboro resident — “by way of New York” — suggested someone hand out tickets with numbers and with someone with a microphone calls out two numbers, “those people should get up and dance.”
DePietro’s partner Thursday was Patricia Teal Adams, also from Wadesboro. They were among the more than 100 fans of the Carolina beach music-playing band — a group with “a whole lotta soul.”
The soul-shaking was contagious Thursday, as others of all ages followed suit. Even young, bashful Noah Goodman tried it.
Noah, 3, was wary of a photographer’s lens training on his movement but when the camera wasn’t looking, Noah was moving with his mom, Danielle Goodman.
“We love the music,” Goodman said. “He doesn’t really sit still in the chair.”
The brick wall sufficed as a temporary resting area until Noah was ready to get up and dance some more — whether mom was ready or not.
A few hours before the scheduled 6:30 p.m. start, the sky over Rockingham continued to appear darker and threatening, a foreboding of storms to come from the remnants of Hurricane Arthur.
Arthur was a no-show, however, this far inland and not a drop from from the clouds during the two-hour performance.
Each Plaza Jam, a free six-performance summer concert series coordinated by the city of Rockingham, is from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. and is free to the public. The remaining schedule includes Too Much Sylvia on Aug. 7, Fantastic Shakers on Sept. 4 and the Craig Woolard Band on Oct. 2.
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