PORT ANGELES — First, the Flying Strings. Then a Hot Damn Scandal.
The Harvest Hoedown, a dance to benefit the Port Angeles Farmers Market, is back at that rustic ballroom known as the Black Diamond Community Hall this Saturday night.
The Flying Strings, formerly known as the Fiddle Kids, are a local band led by Al Watkins. They will start the festivities at 7 p.m., to warm up the crowd for Hot Damn Scandal, a sextet based mostly in Bellingham except for the fiddle player.
She’s Chandra Johnson, a lover of local food and music. A 2014 graduate of Western Washington University, she has degrees in environmental science and music, and holds jobs in both fields. By night, she plays “tipsy American Gypsy blues,” as the Hot Damn Scandal band calls it.
“We do everything from New Orleans swing to folk love songs,” Johnson said. “It’s very danceable,” with its mashup of guitar, Dobro, bass, saxophone, trombone and washboard.
Hot Damn Scandal’s name, Johnson said, comes from a Rainbow Gathering in Wyoming many years ago. While there, band founder Stinky Pete Irving became involved in a brawl. He awoke the next morning rather bruised.
“The event later became known as the Hot Damn Scandal,” Johnson said. Irving is the only original member of the band, though red-headed washboard player Harper Stone has been with the Scandal almost since the beginning.
In addition to releasing a CD, “Strange Tongues,” Hot Damn Scandal has played clubs around the Northwest as well as this past May’s Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts in Port Angeles.
This weekend has them at two local venues: the Cellar Door, 940 Water St. in Port Townsend tonight and the Harvest Hoedown on Saturday.
Since the hoedown is a benefit for the Port Angeles Farmers Market, “we’re definitely giving them a good deal,” said Johnson.
“Sustainability and local food really matter to us.”
By day, Johnson works with Patagonia and a coalition of environmental groups advocating removal of the dams on the Snake River.
As a daughter of the Pacific Northwest, she’s devoted to preservation of its natural beauties — which ties right in with playing Saturday’s benefit dance.
The farmers market, a year-round affair at Front and Lincoln streets from 10 a.m. till 2 p.m. Saturdays, needs at least a couple of fundraisers each year, said manager Cynthia Warne.
“The fees we make off the vendors’ sales aren’t enough to cover all of our bills,” Warne said, adding that while summer sees 20 vendors of produce, prepared foods, art and furniture, that number drops to 11 in winter.
Meantime, expenses such as rent, insurance and salaries for two part-time staffers stay the same or rise.
The Harvest Hoedown had Hot Damn Scandal last year, and “they were really hot,” Warne said. “They have a really unique sound . . . Everybody danced their butts off.”
Farmers market board members, who include Chandra Johnson’s mother, Nancy Bluestein-Johnson, will bring sweet and savory snacks for the crowd, said Warne.
And like last year, farmers market vendors have assembled a large gift basket while Mike’s Cedar Works has donated a picnic table set, valued at $250, to be raffled during the dance.
