Country music concert scheduled for June 30 at Bemidji's Chief Theater

Jun. 22—BEMIDJI — Old-time country music ranging from Merle Haggard to Patsy Cline will be featured at a Pier Country concert at 2 p.m. Sunday, June 30 at the Chief Theater, 314 Beltrami Ave. NW.

Advance tickets are priced at $15 and may be purchased at Raphael's Bakery and Café, 319 Minnesota Ave. NW. Tickets also will be available at the door for $17.50. A portion of the ticket sales will be donated to the Paul Bunyan Playhouse's building restoration fund.

Curtis Takkunen, who formed Pier Country in 1999, said the band includes musicians from throughout the region, from the Twin Cities to Grand Rapids to Fargo. Takkunen currently lives in Wadena but is moving to a home in Bemidji next month.

"These musicians have been carefully selected because of their talent and not their distance," Takkunen said. "We play mostly covers, but we do them in a very nostalgic way just like the original recordings. Any Merle Haggard, George Jones or Glen Campbell song, we take the original recordings from the studio and we replicate that music as though it was that artist performing it themselves."

The Bemidji concert also will feature guest singer Megan Reynolds, who will perform five Patsy Cline songs. Reynolds, who is theater director at Hibbing High School, recently was the lead in "Always ... Patsy Cline," a musical at Coleraine. She is a member of Sugar on the Roof, a trio that performs old-time music and has played in Bemidji.