Country home One of country music’s longestrunning traditions is going strong in tiny Bainbridge. BY KEVIN WILLIAMS; PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE PAXTON THEATER FOUNDATION
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small village in southern Ohio may seem like an unlikely country music hot spot, but Bainbridge, population 3,000, boasts a tradition rivaled only by the country music capital of the world.
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from its seemingly remote location. “Artists from Nashville could stop here and play a show on their way to the East Coast,” says Tim Koehl, owner of the Paxton Theatre, home of the jamboree. “It was a great halfway point.”
Bainbridge is home to the Paint Valley Jamboree, the oldest continuous country music show in Ohio — and second nationally only to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. The Paint Valley Jamboree began in 1967, and in fact it benefited
For its entire lifespan, the Paint Valley Jamboree has been held in the cozy, yet stately — and acoustically friendly — confines of the Paxton, a century-old building anchoring a corner of downtown Bainbridge. It has attracted such
OHIO COOPERATIVE LIVING • MAY 2022
