Submitted photo
The Cash Crew included Scott Ebright, front from left, Billy Engle and Mark Alan Cash; and back, Rick Buck, Tommy Cash and Gary Swartz.

MEXICO — For years, the Juniata River Valley had its own kind of Saturday-morning soundtrack. Long before streaming playlists and Bluetooth speakers, families tuned their radios to 92.5 FM, where Gary Swartz’s voice drifted across the airwaves on “The Country Legend Show.”

It was a half hour of music, memories, and small-town chatter that became a ritual for thousands. Kids heard it from the backseat. Grandparents planned their mornings around it. And somewhere between the static and the steel guitar, a local band was quietly building a legacy that would carry them far beyond the fire halls and VFWs where they first tuned up their instruments.

Now, a decade after retiring in 2014, Country Legend is coming home for a reunion performance — a night that promises to feel less like a concert and more like a gathering of old friends who never forgot where they came from. They will be one of the artists performing at the Harper’s Warriors Winter Wonderland Concert on Saturday, Feb. 28, at the former CJEMS building, located at 47 CJEMS Lane in Mifflintown, inside the River Church Community Room.

The band’s story begins in the early 1990s, when the original lineup — Swartz, Scott “Skippy” Ebright, Rick Buck, Billy Engel and fiddler Carl Stewart — played every small venue that would have them. Stewart, who passed away in the early part of the decade, remains a beloved part of the band’s early identity.

Other well-known local musicians, including Pat Aumiller, Sam Rozelle and Mike Peters, stepped in at various times. But the core group that will take the stage for the reunion is the same one that spent three decades together, long after most bands would have burned out or drifted apart.

“We were family,” Swartz said. “Everybody owned their own business, so nobody had to ask for time off. We just went. We played a lot of jobs where the pay went straight into the bus, but we didn’t care. We loved it.”

Those early years were a blur of VFWs, fire halls, bars, and American Legion posts — the kind of places where the crowd knew every word and the band knew every face. They were local boys playing local music, and that was enough.

Then came the twist no one expected.

A booking agent named Fred Klauser introduced them to Nashville impressionist Johnny Counterfeit, who needed a backing band for a show. Country Legend stepped in, nailed the performance, and suddenly found themselves on the road with him. They toured from Oregon to the East Coast, playing theaters, fairs, and festivals. They had a tour bus, a tight sound, and the kind of chemistry that can’t be faked.

Counterfeit eventually connected them with his friend Tommy Cash, brother of the legendary Johnny Cash. Cash needed a Pennsylvania-based band. Counterfeit, in a gesture Swartz still talks about with gratitude, encouraged them to take the opportunity.

“Johnny said, ‘Gary, Tommy can keep you on the road in a way I can’t right now,'” Swartz recalled. “He told me, ‘Go with him — and I’ll use you when I can.’ That’s the kind of man he was.”

From that moment on, Country Legend became The Cash Crew, touring with Tommy Cash until his death. They played some of the biggest stages of their lives — a 25,000-person crowd in Havelock, Ontario; a show in Branson; even a prison performance in Denmark. Videos of those nights still live on Swartz’s YouTube channel, a digital scrapbook of a band that once carried a little piece of the Juniata Valley onto stages half a world away.

“We were just a bunch of guys from Juniata County,” Swartz said. “And suddenly we were playing for crowds bigger than our hometowns.”

But life changes. Swartz married in 2014 and moved to Ohio. The band retired. Tommy Cash passed away. Johnny Counterfeit passed away. Time, as it does, thinned the crowd of familiar faces.

“Most people who knew Country Legend are excited we’re coming back,” Swartz said. “If they’re still alive,” he added with a laugh. “A lot of our fans are gone now.”

That’s part of what makes this reunion feel so tender — a chance to gather, remember, and celebrate a band that carried local pride farther than anyone expected. Pat Almelo, the original lead player, will join them onstage. Mel Thomas will emcee, just as he did in the old WJUN days, when he and Swartz were known for joking around on air and occasionally getting scolded for it.

The reunion isn’t just about the music. It’s about the memories — the Saturday-morning radio show, the long drives in the tour bus, the nights when the pay barely covered the fuel, the friendships forged in green rooms and backstage hallways, the small-town pride that followed them everywhere they went.

It’s about a band that left home, saw the world, and never forgot the people who first clapped for them in a fire hall in the Juniata River Valley.