It all started with a free cookie.
In February 2024, Owen Dorogi played his clarinet at R&M Bakery in Newark for the first time.
“Sam [the owner] posted on the Facebook page for R&M, if any musicians want to come in and play a song for us, we’ll give you a free cookie,” said Dorogi. “And I saw it and I was like, ‘hey, you know what? That might be fun to go in and play.’”
And he’s been with them ever since.
“I had no tie to anything here, anyone here, before that. I just came in two years ago in February and started playing and I’ve been back nearly every Saturday.”
Dorogi, a 21-year-old from Newark, is majoring in computer science at the Ohio State University at Newark while also teaching private music lessons to students in the area. When it comes to what instruments he plays, he has quite a list.
“The ones I’m proficient at I would say are clarinet, piano, trumpet, trombone, flute,” he said. “There’s a few more that I play and I’m not quite as good at.”
Since he began playing Saturday mornings at R&M, he’s performed on familiar instruments like a tin whistle and a saxophone, as well as more exotic instruments like an ocarina, a Chinese bawu and an Armenian duduk.
Although he has played the clarinet since a young age, Dorogi is the first in his family to show an interest in playing music.
“My grandpa built hammered dulcimers for a living,” Dorogi said. “It’s a string instrument like you see in Appalachian music groups. He did that for a living but he didn’t play the instruments he built.”
Rather, Dorogi’s passion for music started in fourth grade, when one of his friends in fifth grade joined the school band and encouraged him to join, too.
“It’s like the person that’s older than you … If he says the band’s really cool, I have to join,” Dorogi said. “Then I just got really into learning instruments at some point and now it’s just a fun thing. If I see a new instrument I like to pick it up and try it.”
The first instrument he played, the clarinet, remains his primary instrument.
“I’ve played clarinet for 11 years now,” he said.
While he is studying computer science, Dorogi is still deciding what he’ll focus on for a career.
“Originally I wanted to do music as my major in college, but then I transitioned into computer science,” Dorogi said. “If I end up doing music for a living I’ll be happy. If I end up doing computer science for a living, I’ll be happy with music on the side.”
When he plays at R&M, Dorogi enjoys taking popular songs and playing them on instruments that are normally considered classical. He has a lot of unfinished projects he is working on, but he has shared some of his work with the world.
“I have a YouTube channel that’s just called Owen so it’s impossible to find,” he said with a laugh. “But I have a couple things I put out on there.”
Before he was a student at OSU, he attended Licking Valley High School, where he was involved with a variety of musical endeavors and graduated in 2023.
“I played in the concert band there. Well, I played in every band that they had there: the marching band, jazz band, concert bands, the show choir pit.”
When he was a junior in high school, Dorogi joined the Heisey Wind Ensemble, “a very high-level community band, made up of professional musicians, retired music teachers, all kinds of people.”
By playing at R&M, he’s found even more opportunities to share his talents with others.
“I’m playing with a professional harp player that saw my videos on their Facebook page and reached out to them and was like, ‘I would love to play something with him at the bakery at some point,’” Dorogi said.
The harp player is Olivia Claggett, a Licking County native who has played concerts around the country.
Read more: Harpist Olivia Claggett uses her music to inspire growth
“I’ve gotten a lot of cool opportunities through knowing the people here,” said Dorogi.
R&M is a home for music in Licking County, particularly supporting the Newark High School band through multiple events during the year.
“In the summertime, Newark High School marching band has a band camp and at the end of Shields Street is the high school where they practice,” said R&M Bakery owner Sam White. “So one day during that week, they march up Shields Street and come here and they do a little concert on the grass for the daycare next door to us. They play a couple of their fight songs and they do the marching all the way up the Shields Street there and then we give them Gatorade and donuts in exchange for a little mini concert that they have. So then We get an R&M Bakery parade once a year.”
White and his wife, Kristi White, have owned R&M Bakery for the past two and a half years, though have been involved in the business for many more.
“My friend Randy [Miner], who is the R in R&M, he owned it since 1986,” said White. “Five years ago, he passed away unexpectedly with COVID.”
After Randy died, White and his wife Kristi helped Randy’s wife and sister-in-law run the bakery for two years.
“I’d worked here for 18, 20 years off-and-on, helping out making donuts and doing deliveries and different things,” said White. “We had a connection, and [Randy] always knew that I wanted to buy the bakery eventually.”
Before the Whites took ownership in 2023, R&M had a long history where it went by many other names, including Gleason’s Bakery, Wilson’s Bakery, and Hartshorn’s Bakery.
“We’ve been a bakery since the late 40s,” White said. “But originally the building was a firehouse. In 1900, it was built, and it was horse and wagon, so the floors we have back there are brick floors where the horse stalls were at. Then the hayloft is upstairs, and then the wooden floor where the water wagon would sit, and you can see the marks of the floor where the horses would walk on it.”
White wants to list the building on the National Register of Historic Places, administered by the National Park Service.
“We’re doing the paperwork right now,” he said.
Both Dorogi and his family are thankful that he can play at R&M every week.
“Doing this, getting to know [people at R&M] has definitely provided me with a lot of great opportunities that I’m really grateful for,” Dorogi said.
“This place is amazing. We’d never met them until he started coming in, but now they’re family,” said DeAnn Dorogi, Owen’s mom.
“He really liked our cookies, I guess,” added White with a smile.
Ella Kitchens writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.