DELAWARE — There are plenty of voices at the Delaware County Fair — fast-talking auctioneers, eager carnies, squealing pigs, the neigh of an excited horse. The list goes on.
But perhaps the most recognizable voice — and certainly the one most heard across the fairgrounds — comes from the center of the harness racing track.
The announcer.
He’s the one bringing people to their feet as the horses approach the starting gate. As they race down the stretch, his is the voice thousands of fans zero in on as they plead for the horse they placed a bet on to cross the finish line first.
For 57 consecutive years, from 1968 through 2024, the voice behind the Little Brown Jug belonged to Roger Huston.
Across his entire announcing career, Huston said he’s called a whopping 195,302 races and that number is still climbing.
Huston, who turned 84 on Sept. 16, called his last Jug two years ago. Since then, his longtime friend, assistant announcer and mentee, Jason Settlemoir, has taken the reins for the Jug and Jugette calls.
Settlemoir, 49, has served as Huston’s assistant announcer since 2012, although the two have worked alongside each other since Settlemoir was 15.
But don’t expect Huston to disappear from the fairgrounds just because he’s no longer behind the microphone: Thursday’s 81st running of the Little Brown Jug marks the Ohio native and self-proclaimed “country boy’s” 60th year at the fair.
“I don’t think any announcer in any sport can say they worked 60 years at one facility,” Huston said.
An unbelievable backstory
Hank Thomson and Joseph Neville co-founded the Little Brown Jug in 1946 — Huston would have been 4.
The first time he came to the fair, Huston was a sophomore in high school.
Then in 1967, Thomson brought then 25-year-old Huston in to be the race’s announcer, with his first call in 1968.
As for Newark-native Settlemoir, one of the first things he ever did working for Huston was call a race in Lewisburg, West Virginia for the state fair at 15 years old.
“I wasn’t even old enough to drive a car, so my mom and my grandmother had to drive me down there and back,” Settlemoir said.
Settlemoir said he’s been coming to the Jug since 1989 — at the age of 12 — and hasn’t missed one yet.
The age comparisons between the two announcers from when they started their calling careers and first stepping foot on the Delaware County Fairgrounds are uncanny.
“All my school teachers and principals used to ask me for passes to get in here [at the Jug],” Settlemoir said. “It was funny because everyone would be back in school in Newark and I’d be sitting alongside my teachers and my principal up here in Delaware.”
Hearing the comparisons, but being yourself
The transition has apparently been a subtle one.
Settlemoir and Huston said they’ve both heard from fairgoers who think their race calls sound remarkably similar.
But while the crowd might hear similarities between the two announcers’ voices, Huston and Settlemoir don’t — though they said it’s understandable.
“I think we sound totally different,” Huston said. “But there were people here last year who didn’t realize I didn’t call the Jug.
“If there is a sameness, it’s understandable. But it was not intentional.”
Huston said he quietly stepped away from calling the Jugette and Jug because he didn’t want the added pressure as he’s grown older.
“I don’t like the pressure anymore of the Jugette and the Jug. When you’re in your 80s you don’t handle pressure like you did when you were 35,” Huston said.
“You realize you’re on a downhill slope. I’ll still announce 75-80 races a week, I just didn’t want the pressure of the Jugette and the Jug.”
However, Huston was vary adamant about not giving Settlemoir any advice once he made his decision to take a step back.
“I don’t think you should help a person in that way, because number one, you’ve got to be yourself. If you’re not yourself, you’re nobody,” Huston said.
“I might give somebody little pointers, but I never say, ‘You’ve got to do it this way’ or ‘You’ve got to do it that way.’”
Settlemoir said when he was first learning from Huston, he specifically tried not to sound like Huston after watching and listening to him for so many years.
“I tried to not sound like him, but then I had somebody say to me, ‘You know, you and Roger have always sounded alike. And if that’s who you are then you should just do you,'” Settlemoir said.
“That’s what I’ve been doing, and to watch him so many years — it’s a God-given talent quite honestly.”
Huston also said being announcer has to come naturally.
“A lot of people want to be an announcer, but I think from the get-go, you’ve got to have the ability to do it,” he said.
“That’s not to say you can’t fine-tune it and help somebody in that respect, but you should never copy anybody. Jason doesn’t copy me, and I don’t copy anybody.”
Huston stepping back and Settlemoir stepping up
Huston said he decided he wanted to stop calling the Jug and Jugette two years before he actually did.
“I didn’t want to make it public that this was going to be my last year calling the Jug,” Huston said.
“I didn’t even tell Tom Wright [director of racing for the Delaware County Fair and president of the Little Brown Jug Society] that 2024 would be the end.”
Huston said Settlemoir was only the third or fourth person who knew he was hanging up the Jugette and Jug. But Huston didn’t tell Settlemoir until February of last year.
“It was never really announced here until people saw Thursday’s racing program,” Huston said.
“That’s the way I wanted it to be. It was hard. You do something for 58 years, it’s hard to go cold turkey.”
It’s safe to say Settlemoir was ready for the moment. In fact, he said it was something he’d been dreaming about for a long time.
“Roger all those years, he’s been synonymous with Delaware and with the Jug,” Settlemoir said.
“Being able to call the race, as an announcer its just one of those things you hear in your head. The crowd is out there loud, and I keep getting louder as they keep getting louder — this is unbelievable quite honestly.
“Being able to live one of my dreams is surreal,” he said. “I run the Meadowlands out in East Rutherford, New Jersey, but this is home for me.”
Settlemoir’s thoughts heading into the Jug
Put simply, Settlemoir said he’s “just looking forward to the race.”
But as the man who now talks to tens of thousands of people on Jug Day, it’s never that simple.
“It’s just me, the horses and the drivers for those sub-two minutes, that’s what I look forward to the most,” he added.
“It’s actually very peaceful for me to be able to call a race because there’s nothing else going on in my head except for calling the race in front of me.”
Brittany Schock contributed reporting to this story.
