PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN WAMBEKE
John Wambeke grew up in a show business family of sorts. He can remember his parents gathering up local talent from the rural parts of Alberta, Canada and taking them on the road to several towns during the cold winter months performing songs and skits.
Proving the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, Wambeke has continued the family tradition with his annual Cabin Fever shows each January in Hermiston.
“Looking back, the Cabin Fever show is very similar to what my mother and dad did while I was growing up,” he said.
The sixth annual Cabin Fever will be held later this month at the Hermiston Conference Center. Two evening shows are set for Jan. 17-18 and a matinee will be held at 3 p.m. on Jan. 19. The evening shows start out with a no-host bar run by the Pheasant Café & Lounge that opens at 5:30 p.m., with a Dutch oven dinner served at 6 p.m., and the show beginning at 7 p.m. The catering is done by Sharon and Ben Harvey from Sharon’s Country Gourmet.
Tickets for the event sell out quickly. In fact, the Saturday dinner show has already sold out. Tickets for the Friday dinner show are $35 and $10 for the Sunday matinee. Tickets can be purchased at the Hermiston Chamber of Commerce.
Following the dinner on Friday and Saturday nights, the entertainment portion of the program takes over with a mix of new talent and familiar faces (which we’ll get to later).
Wambeke said his Cabin Fever shows have been described as a cross between Hee Haw, The Carol Burnet Show and A Prairie Home Companion.
He originally put the shows on as a way to promote John and Chris Finley’s subscription vegetable business, Finley’s Fresh Produce. Since then, Cabin Fever has added several other sponsors including Elmer’s Irrigation, Kennedy Web Design, B.D. Ables Buildmaster, O So Kleen, Folletts Meats, Unitech Communications, and Cottage Flowers.
But it wasn’t just an effort to promote local businesses that motivated Wambeke to gather his friends on stage to entertain the community.
“I say we started it to promote the Finleys’ business, but the real motivation was self-amusement,” he said. “I have a window cleaning business here in town and although I enjoy my work, it lacks a certain mental stimulus. Planning Cabin Fever fills that need – along with an iPod.”
Now, the entertainment.
Wambeke serves as the master of ceremonies, as well as doing his share of singing and performing in sketches, but it’s far from a one-man show. Other acts include three out of four members of the quartet Absolutely Nobody – all former Blue Mountain Community College students. The fourth member, Jeremy Miller, planned on attending but has been diagnosed with cancer. Wambeke and his friends will be putting on an additional Cabin Fever performance on Jan 25 in Pendleton at BMCC as a fundraiser for Miller.
The other members of the quartet are Stacy Follett Cooley and Cory Cooley from Hermiston, and Joe Lindsay from Lexington.
Hermiston’s Scott Zielke (and some unsuspecting audience members) will perform a comedy sketch. More music will follow with a performance by 16-year-old Alexius Harris from Portland, who just recorded her first CD in 2013. Harris is the granddaughter of Hermiston’s Greg and Loretta Fitterer.
“She has great energy and plays guitar and sings,” Wambeke said.
Stacy Cooley will be back on stage during the second half of the show and will perform with Sandstone Middle School eighth grader Reed Middleton.
Wambeke said all the Cabin Fever regulars will be back, including his son’s band, the Frazer Wambeke Trio joined by trumpeter John Ladines. Other returning favorites include state champion fiddler Eric Jepsen of Ione and Hermiston’s Pat Ward, whom Wambeke refers to as “our resident comedian.”
Another Cabin Fever tradition, said Wambeke, is that something always tends to blow up on stage – literally.
“Most years, the audience can see it coming,” he said. “But this year, I think we are going to surprise them all.”
And while a lot of planning and preparation go into each year’s performances, Wambeke said it can be described in four simple words.
“My mother summed up Cabin Fever the other night on the phone,” he said. “She called it ‘dinner and a laugh.’ ”
