Greensburg band to provide Groundhog Day music in Gobbler's Knob

Greensburg’s Derek Woods Band will provide the musical backdrop for this year’s Groundhog Day festivities Feb. 2 at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney.

And if the past is any indication, Woods and his band members had better start layering their clothes now.

“The sets we played were limited to about 10 minutes, because your fingers kind of stop working,” said Peter Flynn, who played Groundhog Day in 2020 with Pittsburgh band The Beagle Brothers. “You can’t play much longer than that.”

That is to make no mention of the first set, which for Woods will begin around 4:30 a.m.

“We’d been interested in doing it, and we played in Punxsutawney a few years back,” said Woods, 33, of Greensburg. “They were looking for a band this year and reached out to us.”

Woods said he can remember being on the opposite side of the stage when he attended Groundhog Day as a kid.

“I was probably 8 years old,” he said. “So being able to come back and perform for it is pretty surreal.”

A few years earlier, Pittsburgh resident Danny Rectenwald had just started playing with the Beagle Brothers when he found out about the Groundhog Day gig — the hard way.

“We were playing a show the night before that got done around 11 p.m. And when we were finished, someone said it was time to head to Punxsutawney,” Rectenwald said. “I had no idea what any of it was. I was like, ‘Where’s the hotel?’ and they said, ‘There is no hotel. We just go there and stay up all night.’ ”

Armed against the cold in a pair of New Balance tennis shoes and “a kind-of-warm coat,” Rectenwald said he spent most of the morning trying in vain to stay warm.

But back in Pittsburgh later that night, he said he got an unexpected surprise that made the frigid gig well worth it.

“I had short hair and a big bushy beard at the time,” he said. “That night I was watching ‘The Daily Show.’ And Jon Stewart put a photo of us on the screen when they were talking about Punxsutawney, and said that they had hired ‘Pittsburgh’s best Zac Brown cover band’ — I realized he was specifically talking about me.”

The Derek Woods Band also will play a show in Punxsutawney’s Barclay Square on Feb. 1 at 4 p.m.