Sgt. Peppercorn’s Marathon set to take place at the Bluestone

Joe Peppercorn has long said that Sgt. Peppercorn’s Marathon, the yearly concert in which he joins with an armada of Columbus musicians to perform the entirety of the Beatles’ catalog in chronological order, won’t carry on forever. 

When that time comes, one would hope Peppercorn will be the one to make the decision, sending the marathon out on his own terms. This year, however, the choice was nearly made for him with the abrupt early September closure of the Athenaeum Theatre, which has most recently served as the event’s home base. “At the moment we don’t know if the marathon is going to happen or not,” Peppercorn wrote via Sgt. Peppercorn’s Marathon Facebook page on Nov. 11. “Many factors involved, and all of them completely out of our control.”

Fortunately for Peppercorn and Co., this year’s show will indeed go on, with the marathon returning to its former home at the Bluestone on Saturday, Dec. 27. (Tickets are available online here.)

“I am grateful for the turmoil of the last few months. I am grateful that I lost the show for a minute, because it really allowed me to truly appreciate how lucky I am to have my friends and family and all of you and this wonderful show,” Peppercorn wrote in a public Facebook post announcing the move to the Bluestone. “Doing a show at this scale does require a lot of things out of my control, so there is a chance this will be the last one. I hope it is not, but I will be approaching it and playing it as if it is.”

Now in its 16th year, the marathon began as something of a lark, Peppercorn setting up at Andyman’s Tree Bar and attempting to play his way through every Beatles album in order as a means of coping with the grief he felt following the July 2010 death of Columbus radio DJ John Andrew “Andyman” Davis. 

“And there weren’t that many people, but for everybody there, he was somebody who had been in their lives,” Peppercorn said in a 2023 interview. “And so, this spirit was hanging over it. And it didn’t make his sudden death make any more sense, and it didn’t make everything okay, but it gave us a certain sense of peace. There was something about it that was healing, where it was like, alright, it’s not okay but it’s okay.”

In the years since, the marathon has continued to serve a similar purpose for Peppercorn, buoying him amid the challenges and pains that can arise in the course of a life, including the 2015 death of friend Brett Helling and the 2023 stroke suffered by Giuseppe Mangano, the chef and co-founder of Giuseppe’s Ritrovo, where Peppercorn works as bar manager.

At the same time, the concert has also evolved into something more universal, with Peppercorn recalling how a few years back he spoke with an older woman who attended while wearing a necklace containing the ashes of her son. In past years, she told Peppercorn, her son had taken her to the show, and she wanted to experience it with him at least one more time. As Peppercorn first relayed this story a couple of years back, it was possible to imagine that there were points in the concert when this woman was able to close her eyes and again feel her son by her side, even if briefly.

“Who knows? But that’s a gift to not just create something that has those moments but to be a part of it,” Peppercorn said. “The show is mine, but it also belongs to everyone. I started it, but now it has its own life.”