Two premier area rock bands of the 1970s will perform Saturday, July 9, at the Indian Crossing Casino on Waupaca’s Chain O’ Lakes in a concert called Oldstock 2016. Admission is $10.

Daddy Whiskers will take the stage at 8 p.m., followed by Heartstrings at 10 p.m. until 11:30 p.m. This is the third straight year the two groups have performed, maintaining a tradition Heartstrings had started in 2011. Daddy Whiskers joined the concert in 2014.

The history of the two groups goes back to 1972 when two members of the Stevens Point country-rock band Mesa formed a new country-rock band, Daddy Whiskers. The original band lineup included Randy Bruce on rhythm guitar and vocals; Frank Stanislawski on lead guitar and vocals; Joe Ebel on lead guitar, fiddle and vocals; and Jeff Ebel on drums and vocals.

Other individuals who performed with the band included Danny Bartkowiak, Greg Curran, Ross Goltz, Gale Barchus, Tony Menzer, Jack Hurrish and Danny Alfuth on bass; Jim Ohlschmidt, Scott Neubert, Mike Bestul and Tom Dehlinger on guitar; Pat Bowe on harmonica and vocals; and Paul Bentzen on banjo in the studio.

Daddy Whiskers released an “Anthology” CD at Oldstock in 2014 featuring all their studio recordings from 1972, 1980 and 1981. A few copies of this CD will be available at Oldstock 2016.

The band created a substantial catalogue of original material before it broke up in 1981, then reunited for one performance in 1998 at Riverfront Rendezvous in Stevens Point before getting back together for the performances at Oldstock.

Bruce, Stanislawski and Jeff Ebel will perform at Oldstock July 9. They will be joined by Neubert on lead guitar, Dehlinger on pedal steel and Alfuth on bass.

Many members of the band continue to perform, either in other bands or as solo artists. Stanislawski, Jeff Ebel and Alfuth frequently perform locally as the Gray Catz.

Heartstrings began back in 1973 as an outgrowth of the band Roadhouse with band members living in the Iola, Scandinavia and Amherst area, including Jim Prideaux and Mike Bestul on lead guitars and Dan Halverson on vocals and keyboards. By 1974 the band lineup included Pat Houlihan on vocals and guitar, and those four members will be the core of the band at Oldstock.

They will be joined by Jim Hotvedt, an original Roadhouse member from 1972, on bass and Stu McDoniel, a band member when the group broke up about 1980, on drums.

Prideaux said the band went through a lot of changes during its years of existence, as he and Bestul remained the only constants. Andy Huntoon was probably the longest-serving bass player in Heartstrings, but he stopped playing after the band broke up and no longer performs.

Dave Olson, the original drummer for Heartstrings, died a year or two before the first Oldstock, and Prideaux said Olson was a good friend and will always be missed. “I tend to think that’s also part of what makes Oldstock a special gig for all of us.”

 “The band was originally influenced by much of the music of the late ’60s, which was also very likely influenced by the Vietnam War, civil rights issues, etc. It was certainly a product of its time,” Prideaux said. The band kept changing, he said, because “we all wanted to get our college degrees and get into the working world.”

Bruce, a member of Daddy Whiskers, said, “The Heartstrings sound is a blues-rock/country-rock influence that is super charged by the twin towers’of Prideaux and Bestul, two fiery guitarists that quite often will meet in the middle of the stage, exchanging licks, pushing each other, upping the musical ante with every lick.”

Prideaux said Heartstrings and Daddy Whiskers were parallel groups for quite awhile, both performing country-rock music. In fact, one member of each band, Bruce from Daddy Whiskers and Bestul from Heartstrings, played for the other band, although only as substitutes for one performance.

Heartstrings doesn’t have a CD available. He said the band had a number of live recordings and some studio recordings, but he doesn’t know what became of those tapes. The band also played a lot of cover songs from other groups, he said, whereas Daddy Whiskers did a lot more recordings because they wrote a lot more original songs.

When Halverson and Houlihan left the band, members started writing more original material but they never developed that material.

Prideaux said Oldstock came from a suggestion from Dave Mesunas, an early member of Roadhouse, in 2011. The first Oldstock included four bands, Roadhouse, Heartstrings, Trix and Thunderbird. Prideaux basically promoted and ran the next several events, with the Desperados band joining Heartstrings for a concert one year. The last three years have featured Heartstrings and Daddy Whiskers.

This year, Prideaux turned over the duties of organizing the event to Bruce, who said, “The legends live on every year at Oldstock. The old fans who had followed both bands in the 1970s are as rabid now as they had been 40 years ago, filling the Casino to capacity the past two years. It is certainly a reunion for the fans, brought together once again by the music that they have always loved.”

Bruce said many of the band members still remain in the central Wisconsin area, but some members come from as far away as Cleveland, Ohio; Nashville, Tenn.; and Albuquerque, N.M. “There is some magic that happens when all these guys get together,” he said, calling the concert “one of the highlights of the summer for music fans from Stevens Point to Waupaca and beyond.”