Saturday’s concert includes 7 Bridges, which performs music from the Eagles.

In 1980, the Warren Struthers Library Theatre’s main tenant, the Blatt Brothers Movie Co., abandoned its lease on the theater. Local scuttle-butt was the theater should be razed and replaced with a parking garage.

A small group of local people gathered together to spearhead an effort to keep the theater intact. This nucleus of people felt strongly that the theater would make a wonderful performing arts center for the town. A nonprofit group was formed called the Friends of The Library Theatre. A member of that first small group who felt strongly about the future of the theater was Derek McKown, then curator of the Warren County Historical Society. McKown left Warren later that year to continue his education.

During his absence the efforts to keep the doors open as an arts center continued and a membership drive for the newly formed Friends group was held. At that time another local individual with memories of the old theater as the movie house of her childhood wanted to do her part in keeping the theater in town.

Pamela Tidrick joined the Friends of the Library Theatre. In 1983, these two people met and found that they shared a love for the theater. Both back in Warren, they volunteered together doing many things during the theater’s founding years of its Summer Playhouse — writing grants, overseeing an ushers guild, managing the box office, painting sets, collecting props for shows and more.

When the pair decided to marry in 1987, the perfect place to unite their lives permanently was in their beloved theater. By 1994, the Library Theatre had been completely restored and had seen nearly a decade of summer playhouses and other performances and events. But like many rejuvenated theaters it had not yet reached the level of a full season’s schedule packed with nightly or even weekly events.

One day the couple decided to share another of their passions with friends, their joy of Irish music. So in 1994, with the help of another Celtic music enthusiast, Robert Shaffer, their “First Night of Irish Music” was presented. Back then, however, the dance part was replaced with Irish food and drink. Yes, a huge “Irish Music Ceilidh” was presented in the library room of the Struthers Library Theatre. That night the idea was hatched that next year a stage show should be presented with a ceilidh afterward in the library room.

And so it was! The first Irish show on stage in 1995, was a success! Yankee Bush Productions was born! The couple decided to put together an entire season of shows for 1996. “Our basic mission was to reach audiences of people who had never been inside the renovated theater and to give local and regional talent the opportunity to perform on a historic stage that had been graced over the years by some of the nation’s biggest stars. So artists were sought out and theme shows were created,” the couple said.

Since 1996, Yankee Bush Productions has continued to search out and offer the opportunity to amateur and professional musicians alike to experience the thrill of performing on wonderful historic stages. Those first years we manually created small programs with a schedule of the concerts’ performers and ads for our future shows in it to give to the audience. By the end of 1996, we realized that the only way we would ever be able to continue bringing music concerts to the area was to sell advertising to area businesses that would be printed in a program and given free to all Yankee Bush Productions audiences. The ticket sales would pay for the productions’ budget and the ad sales would pay for our work. In 2017, we launched our website which included our Yankee Bush Productions’ Website Advertising Showcase.

Area businesses now have the opportunity to advertise their businesses online while helping to ensure the arts continue to thrive in their communities. In 1998, the business moved to Jamestown to the Reg Lenna Civic Center. A 1920s movie palace, the Reg was home to Lucille Ball and then to her and Desi Arnaz’s national museum for a time.

“At the Reg we experimented with nationally known acts like Diamond Rio, B. J. Thomas and The History of Yankee Bush Productions comedian, Ray Romano. We needed more help to do bigger shows and the Reg Lenna Civic Center had a full-time staff to help sell tickets and coordinate the staging of the productions,” the couple said.

Yankee Bush Productions expanded in 2001. For five years we produced five shows per year in a single theater, so in 2001, we decided to present 10 shows, mostly music concerts, in two historic, beautifully renovated theaters. Five shows were presented in Warren’s Library Theatre and five in Jamestown’s Reg Lenna Civic Center.

“For several years we booked local and regional talent either as the main event or as opening acts,” the couple said. “As time passed we learned that during certain times of the year it was impossible to attract enough audience members to make a show financially feasible due to things like the weather and Thanksgiving and Christmas parties and Christmas events, so we slowly backed off the number of shows we produced to what we currently produce, four shows per year – two in the spring and two in the fall, and are exclusively tribute shows. We continue to book local talent for our shows when we can. We encouraged a local group of musicians to create a Foreigner Tribute which became Blue Morning. We booked them for their first show ever in October, 2018. And in November, 2022, we booked a band from Jamestown, Uptown Fever, to do a 60s & 70s Motown Tribute Show. We continue to use local and regional talent for our shows; however, tribute shows, which has become what we exclusively book these days, cannot always be local or regional.”

However, since 1996, Yankee Bush Productions has brought an abundance of talent to the stages of Warren and Jamestown and plans to do so for many years to come. “We are proud to have showcased local and regional talent in these beautifully renovated area theaters. Our shows gave and will continue to give local and regional artists an additional outlet for their music. And audiences are given the opportunity to relax in a lovely, smokefree theater and enjoy many talented musicians that they probably otherwise would never experience. We at Yankee Bush Productions hope you enjoy our shows and want to come back again and again.”

On Saturday at 8 p.m., Yankee Bush Productions will present a band that has become a regional favorite, 7 Bridges, with their Tribute to Hall-of-Famers, The Eagles at the recently renovated, historic Struthers Library Theatre, Warren. Sponsored by Crescent Beer, audiences have loved the experience of Seven Bridges’ Tribute to Hall-of-Famers, The Eagles again and again.

Seven Bridges: The Ultimate Eagles experience is a stunningly accurate tribute to Southern California’s most famous musical group, The Eagles. Using no backing tracks or harmonizers, Seven Bridges faithfully re-creates the experience of an Eagles concert from the band’s most prolific period. They perform Eagles’ greatest hits, “Take It Easy,” “Desperado,” “Hotel California,” “Heartache Tonight,” “New Kid in Town” and much more.

The Eagles are an American rock band formed in Los Angeles, in 1971 by Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner. With five number-one singles and six number-one albums, six Grammy Awards and five American Music Awards, the Eagles were one of the most successful musical acts of the 1970s in North America and are one of the world’s best-selling bands, having sold more than 200 million records worldwide.

The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall-of-Fame in 1998 and into the Vocal Group Hall-of-Fame in 2001. The Eagles’ music which crosses over from country to rock and back has popularized the Southern California country The History of Yankee Bush Productions rock sound.

A Seven Bridges show is suitable for music lovers of all ages.

Tickets are available at yankeebushproductions.com or visit or call the Struthers Library Theatre Office, 302 W. Third. Ave., Warren, at 814-723-7231, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday. Tickets will be available at the door.