When the ceiling started to fall at the historic Oriental Theater late Friday, Doug Kershaw said he thought a bomb was going off.
“Let me tell you, that was a shocker,” said the 75-year-old Kershaw, known as “the Ragin’ Cajun, king of the fiddle players.” “I’ve heard people tell me I’ve torn the house down, but never literally.”
Kershaw and three bandmates had just finished playing “Bully of the Bayou” as his first encore and had cleared the stage.
Seconds later, “I was coming back down to do a second encore because they were still yelling,” Kershaw said.
Then he heard the noise.
When Kershaw got to the stage, it was filled with dust and debris. “Man, I’m still choked with it,” he said Tuesday. “People were yelling, ‘Get out of the building!’ “
About a 20-foot-by-15-foot section of ceiling plaster above the stage fell.
No one was injured, but Kershaw’s wife, her father and their friends were sitting in the first row of seats just beyond the dance floor. He said the debris missed them by inches.
“It didn’t hit me for a few hours how close we came to getting either killed or badly injured,” Kershaw said.
Most of his equipment, including his guitar and accordion, were flattened. His famous fiddle was still under his arm, safe.
“But she’s such a beautiful old theater, it’s got to be repaired,” said Kershaw, who is volunteering to come back and play the first show celebrating its reopening.
Theater officials say Sunday is the earliest possible date for a reopening, but that will depend on the approval of the Denver Fire Department after repairs are made.
Kershaw and his wife, Pamela Eson, have lived in Greeley for 25 years. Kershaw served on the Greeley-Evans school board.
Kershaw makes a point to play at the Oriental often, he said, because it’s in the northwest Denver neighborhood where Eson grew up.
“It’s not a moneymaking thing,” he said. “It’s for my wife, because she can get all her friends out there. She used to see movies at the Oriental as a kid.”
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
