Culture
Sarah Hart and The Local Girls give a local fan the experience of a lifetime
By: Nick Hart
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The treacheries of cold weather led to the cancellation of Sarah Hart and The Local Girls’ annual Christmas concert that was supposed to be at Central Venue on Carpenter Street on Sunday.
Calls for freezing rain that evening convinced the band and the show’s producer that hosting the event could prove dangerous to those attending.
“It was a tremendous disappointment to see that the weather would endanger our audience and the performers,” Local Girls’ member Mimi Hart said. “So, you know, we had to make a decision and we made a hard one.”
This was the first time in 25 years that The Local Girls had to cancel their annual Christmas show, and many were upset they missed their opportunity to see a Grammy-nominated artist in the concert’s special guest, Sarah Hart.
“I wanted to go see it this weekend as a way to prepare for finals and just do something fun, and then they say it got cancelled because of the snow,” said Ohio University student Julianne Mobilan. “[Sarah Hart] has been nominated for Grammys and stuff, she performed for the Pope, she sounds cool!”
Sarah was equally disappointed that she couldn’t showcase her talents for the Athens community on Sunday.
“I was really bummed when I got the news,” said Sarah Hart, who performed in Vatican City at the request of the Pope earlier this year. “I was actually getting ready, carrying on with my preparation like I would have been before any show, when I got the word that we weren’t going to do the show.”
Sarah also added that such an event in the music business is referred to as “an act of God” when something like inclement weather or a natural disaster affects a contractural obligation to perform.
This act of God not only stopped the show, but also left many out in the cold, as multiple people told Mimi after the fact that they had stayed in uptown Athens after attending Sunday morning mass waiting for the show.
While the official Local Girls’ concert was cancelled, that didn’t stop the trio from carolling in a special private concert elsewhere in town.
Alexis Reinhart, who grew up developmentally disabled as the result of a hydrocephalus condition at birth, was lucky enough to host The Local Girls in her own home on Wednesday.
Shortly after hearing that the Christmas concert had been cancelled, Reinhart called Mimi Sunday afternoon and was in tears before Mimi and the rest of the Local Girls, Gay Dalzell and Brenda Catania, agreed to come to her house and sing for her.
“[Alexis] has been our greatest supporter for the 25 years,” said Dalzell. “She’d always jump up on the stage and sing at the end… it wasn’t Christmas without her.”
Alexis’ parents, Billy and Suzanne Reinhart watched on as their daughter sat on their couch and sang along with her friends to classic carols for well over an hour. Billy called the gesture “incredible”.
“Alexis has been singing with [the Local Girls] at every Christmas show that they’ve done,” Billy said. “Lex was pretty broken-hearted when she heard they cancelled the show because it’s one of the things she really looks forward to.”
While Alexis was all smiles at her concert, the rest of Athens will have to wait until next year to go caroling with The Local Girls, as there are currently no plans to rescedule the event this year.
Mimi plans on having her niece, Sarah, return next year for the same show.