PREVIEW: The Ooky Spooky Showcase Returns
10/25/25 @ Troy Listening Room, Troy
Photos from last year’s event by Kiki Vassilakis
“The beauty of the event is that no one truly knows the tone or content of the piece until the day of the show.”
Well, folks, Spooky Season is upon us, and while much of our reality might seem haunted, there are some much more fun hauntings we can celebrate this time of year thanks to the third edition of the Ooky Spooky Musical Showcase. The evening features a variety of Capital Region artists–this year including Super 400 and Buggy Jive–who present an original ballad inspired by a story of local true crime or mystery (pre-1920) that was found in the archives of the Troy Public Library.
Beginning in 2019 at Little Pecks, then interrupted by a Covid hiatus, the showcase returned last year in spectacular fashion at Cohoes Music Hall. While the experiment with full-band sound was fantastic, organizers and members of the Eddies award winning Zan and The Winter Folk—Zan Strumfeld and Michael Gregg—are excited to bring the show to a new Capital Region location that will return the showcase to its intimate beginnings: Troy Listening Room.
Of the location change, Zan says that, just as they host a variety of musicians each year, “we wanted to have a variety of music venues. Troy Listening Room is Sam Torres and Sophia Vastek’s home.” For the folks paying attention in the back, Sophia Vastek is the artist and composer, Sova, who will also be playing at this year’s showcase.
While Cohoes Music Hall brought us a haunted venue last fall, Troy Listening Room brings its own history to the table. Zan explains that the location “was a former Ukrainian dance hall in South Troy. [Vastek and Torres] have converted the bottom part of it for their living space, and the top part for a music venue. It's this really cool auditorium space, very intimate, way more low key than a music venue – it's basically like a glorified living room space with high ceilings. It's really special there. It's going to be a perfect place to have this intimate, spooky event.”
While creepiness and scares are at the heart of this event, it can be a challenging line to walk to ensure that stories provided to the artists to choose from are dark, yet filled with enough captivating material to inspire a ballad. Michael, who compiles these newspaper articles thanks to his work at the Troy Public Library, tells me that this year he focused on providing artists the choice between darkness and light.
“There certainly was a good smattering of brutal crimes that were available [for artists]. The last couple times we've done the showcase, we've had a good mix of somebody taking on a dark story and composing a short story, but I also want to have room for mirth and levity. I tried to throw in some hapless criminals, perhaps, or random occurrences, public embarrassments, that kind of thing.”
Yet, the beauty of the event is that no one truly knows the tone or content of the piece until the day of the show. “Do they want to take a really gruesome event and turn it into something a little more light hearted or funny or sad or cynical?” Zan asks. “They can kind of go in whatever direction they [want to].”
One thing we do know for sure is that audience members can anticipate a wider range of genres than in years past. From Super 400 stripping down their famous rock sound to Sova’s completely instrumental piano piece, the variety has been broadened from the traditional singer-songwriter pieces. Regardless of genre, though, Michael explains that “this is a great way to hear a bunch of great songwriters tackle a very difficult task.”
“For musicians that attend and aren't performing, [I hope it] makes them want to try to write a different type of song, or any type of creativity,” Zan chimes in. “It's so easy to get into creative ruts when you're working off the same material, or your typical template of how you do things in any creative facet.”
Whether you’re coming for the ghosts of Capital Region past, to shake the ghost of writer’s block, or just to hear some good music, it’s going to be a scary good time.
The third edition of the Ooky Spooky Musical Showcase will be on Saturday, October 25th at 7:30pm at the Troy Listening Room. Tickets are $30, available here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-3rd-ooky-spooky-musical-showcase-capital-region-crimes-creepy-songs-tickets-1677672677139
