Green Shoes Studio Awards: An Evening with Fred

EAST PEORIA — Is there any award show that could be shorter than The Grammy’s? Apparently there is and a lot of more fun as well.

On Mar. 15, the Illinois Central College in partners with Green Shoe Studio put on an award show called “Green Shoes Studio Awards: An Evening with Fred” at the Performing Arts Center. The show was to recognize those who change and make a difference in their community through music.

Before the show started, music was provided by the Larry Harms Trio playing some nice, smooth jazz as audience members tried to find a seat. The show started off with hosts Reid Robinson and Greg King, who opened up the show with a funny monologue.

As the evening moved forward, the audience got to see some of the artists’ background stories on the video screen before they performed. Performances came from people such as Graham Couger to The Maloof Sisters, Markie and Michy, who performed an Elvis Presley classic ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’ to Fred Stobaugh, which was his favorite song and a huge Presley fan.

Besides the music performances, there were awards given out. There were three awards, one to a schoolteacher who has encouraged children to continue with music, another was to Harms, an ICC music professor and the last was to Stobaugh.

Each, like the artists, was shown a clip of their work and how their contributions have made a difference.

“I was stunned,” said Harms, about the award.

Harms mentioned that he really didn’t see it coming and that it was nice to receive this honor.

But the evening that everyone was most excited for was to see Stobaugh, whom wrote the song ‘Oh Sweet Lorraine’ and entered a singer-songwriter contest that was hosted by Green Shoe Studio and soon was a huge success. His song attracted more than six million hits on YouTube and made it on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 42, making him the oldest artist to appear in the Hot 100, surpassing Tony Bennett.

Both King and Robinson, got to sit down and talk with Stobaugh, along with the man who helped make his song popular, Jacob Colgan, who is the founder of Green Shoe Studio. A documentary and a new song that both Colgan and Stobaugh worked on will be released later this year.

“[Fred] is such an amazing person and an inspiration,” said Jane Ginger, 56, of Peoria. “I’ve listened to his song so many times and it just brings an emotional joy.”

Ginger added that it was very nice to see these certain people get recognized for their efforts to influence students and others to music.

Colgan said that this event was a lot of fun and that he hopes to continue to do this every year. He hopes ICC would host the event again, because he thought the school was so generous to host this year’s event.