By STU CLAMPITT
news@readthereporter.com
Our friends at Pasto Italiano, 3150 E. State Road 32, Westfield, have a gift for finding exceptionally talented musicians who live right here in central Indiana. Every Wednesday owners Kent and Patsy offer customers music from Benito DiBartoli and every Friday they find a variety of musical artists to perform a plethora of genres.
For this Friday, Jan. 12, they’ve discovered a saxophonist you don’t want to miss: Erick Oneal Fisher.
Fisher, a native of Michigan, recently moved to Noblesville. He is a self-taught sax player who told The Reporter he’s been playing sax for over 20 years and playing woodwinds since elementary school.
Fisher has provided music at the 2022 Senior PGA Tournament in Benton Harbor, Mich., and various venues across both Michigan and Indiana. He also served on the board of the Southwest Michigan Symphony Orchestra. And now he lives in Hamilton County.
“Me and my fiancée were looking at school districts,” Fishers said. “One of the most important things for us is to make sure that our children were going somewhere where they could grow, be challenged in a great school system. And so that’s where it came about. Noblesville came out with one of the best school systems and we said, ‘okay, that works. What else is here?’ We were just looking for a place to start our journey together.”
With family in Indianapolis and great schools in Noblesville, Fisher looked around and found plenty of entertainment close by.
“There’s so much to do here,” Fisher said. “Everything is just minutes away, whether you’re going to Westfield or downtown Indianapolis. So everything is in great distance of each other. We love it.”
His next goal was to find places to play, and that’s when he discovered Patsy’s Pub, 17418 Carey Road, Suite C, Westfield, which is owned by the same people who run Pasto Italiano.
“I’ve been in this area for about a year now,” Fisher told The Reporter. “One of the things that was on my list is ‘I got to get to some of these open mics and see what it’s all about.’ I went to one of their open mics, loved it. The crowd was great. I came back – I think it was the third time – when I met the owner.”
If you go to Pasto Italiano this Friday, you may hear a little David Sanborn, Gerald Albright, Al Green, perhaps some Hall & Oates and other artists from the ‘60s though today.
“I would say I’m not necessarily a jazz musician because everyone puts out that, hey, if you play the sax, you’re a jazz musician,” Fisher said. “I started out with gospel. I think R&B and pop is kind of my area that I’m in. And doing COVID is really where I picked up my jazz. Since there was a lot going on, you couldn’t go anywhere, I was like, ‘this is the area that I want to focus on.’”
Fisher said his love of music began in church.
“It actually started for me early in my background as a small child, five, six years old, hearing the saxophone in church, you know, playing gospel music,” Fisher said. “And it never left me. That was always there.”
You can hear Erick Oneal Fisher this Friday, Jan. 12, at Pasto Italiano. Call (317) 804-2051 to make your reservations.
If you have an event you’d like Fisher to play, you can reach him by phone at (317) 703-9719 or by email at ErickOnealFisher@gmail.com. You can also look him up on Facebook and Instagram.