Live Music/Performances

We bring the community together by hosting a wide variety of live music events that celebrate our heritage and expose us to new perspectives. From Celtic and bluegrass to jazz and rock & roll, the Pendleton Center for the Arts is a great spot to experience the power of live music. You can keep up with all our Facebook events HERE.

Up Next:

THE EOCENES
THURSDAY , SEPT. 14, 2023
7:00 PM – Doors open 6:30 PM
Tickets $15

Just as Round Up comes around every year, so does first-rate bluegrass with The EOcenes. With the fluid grace that comes only with musicians who’ve played together for more than 50 years, this group puts on a show that will delight both you and your Round Up guests. Reserve seats early! This year’s show is being proudly presented in memory of Nyla Macomber. 

One of the most beloved traditions of Round Up week, The EOCenes (formerly Cabbage Hill) performance features some of the finest bluegrass musicians in the northwest.

Ron Emmons, well-known as the front man for the popular Cabbage Hill bluegrass band, will be joined by classmates Hugh McClellan, Duane Boyer, and Hal Spence. While the 1960’s were synonymous with hippies, counterculture and psychedelic sound, in the small rural town of La Grande, the group of Eastern Oregon College students was experimenting with a different form of music: bluegrass.

Emmons and Boyer met during freshmen orientation week at Eastern Oregon College and connected with Spence and McClellan through their involvement in the Eastern Oregon College Ambassadors, a musical touring group that performed high school assemblies all over the Northwest. Each man went on to have great success over the past five decades on the national bluegrass scene, performing with a wide range of groups and ensembles.

Bluegrass musicians tend to mix and match themselves into different arrangements for different performances. The name EOCenes is a play on the college’s monogram, EOC (which later became EOU) and the Eocene epoch, a period on the geological time scale that occurred 55-34 million years ago.

Emmons lives in Hermiston and has played mandolin and sung lead tenor and baritone with the Blue Mountain Crested Wheatgrass Boys, the Muddy Bottom Boys, Blue Heat and The Thatchmasters, as well as Cabbage Hill.

Boyer now lives in Haines, Oregon and plays banjo and guitar, and sings lead, tenor and baritone. He taught banjo and guitar at EOC and played a major role in bringing national Bluegrass acts to that part of the state.

Hugh McClellan resides in Oregon City and plays rhythm guitar, harmonica and is known for is low, lonesome bass voice. He’s also fronted a country-swing band and sang in a gospel quartet.

Hal Spence of Dallas, Oregon played guitar and sang tenor for 27 years with The Sawtooth Mountain Boys, one of the nation’s best-known bluegrass bands, whose travels included three tours of Europe.

Doug Jenkins first played with the other members at festivals and fiddle contest in the late 1960s. He went on to win many titles with his fiddle, earning the nickname “Lightning.”

The sixth member of the band, Alan Feves, is known to audiences across the northwest not only by his prowess on the bass with folk groups like the EOCenes, but also as a jazz and classical musician.