Old-Time Music and Bluegrass Jam
When: 7 to 9 p.m. starting Thursday, Jan. 20 continuing Jan. 27, Feb. 3 and 17, March 3 and 17, and April 7 and 14
Where: WCU’s Mountain Heritage Center

The days of front porch jam sessions and community dances are growing few, but Western Carolina University’s Mountain Heritage Center aims to reinvigorate these traditions with its upcoming series of old-time and bluegrass, square and buck dancing get-togethers.

The first Old-Time Music and Bluegrass Jam for local pickers and singers, and for those who just want to listen, will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 20, at Western’s Mountain Heritage Center.

“This is an informal gathering designed to provide musicians a place to meet several times a month to share tunes and techniques,” said Suzanne McDowell, interim director of the Mountain Heritage Center.

Future jam sessions will be held Thursday nights at the same time and location on Jan. 27, Feb. 3 and 17, March 3 and 17, and April 7 and 14. The jam sessions are open to everyone, from beginners to seasoned musicians, of all ages.

“If you can hold an instrument, you can come,” McDowell said.

These community-based jam sessions are the brainchild of McDowell and Julie Walters Steele, the new director of the university’s A.K. Hinds University Center.

Using a long list of former Mountain Heritage Day performers and Steele’s family heritage as old-time musicians, the two cooked up a loose invitation list of Jackson County’s musical notables including the Fiddling Dills Sisters, the Queen Family and the Deitz Family. With these powerhouse pickers in their pockets, and a hope that the university’s students would make a showing, McDowell and Steele put the word out to local music stores and venues.

“We’re just trying to throw a broad net,” McDowell said.

The jam session concept relies on a variety of musicians’ play-by-ear training, something that allows the likes of banjo pickers, guitar players and fiddlers to come together, melding their styles into one.

“None of us read music,” said Delores Deitz, who along with her husband, Bill, their daughter, Crystal, and Bill’s brother, Joe, make up the Deitz Family band. “If you read music, it would change the whole sound.”

Bill and Joe have played what Delores called “mountain music” — a blend of old-time and bluegrass — since they were young, but faded out over time and didn’t pick back up until Bill and Delores returned from living in California in the 1970s.

When the couple’s daughter, Crystal, turned 9, she too found an interest in music, first learning to play upright bass, then banjo and guitar. Picking an instrument became more like a game of musical chairs as the family traded off, eventually forming a band with fiddle player Harry Cagle.

The group began playing at Mountain Heritage Day, but Cagle grew ill and in 1997 the Deitzs went out on their own.

“I guess the rest is history,” Delores said.

Crystal, now 31, has moved away and consequently the family band only gets together for some of Jackson County’s biggest shindigs — Mountain Heritage Day and the Balsam Mountain Bluegrass Jamboree. However, informal jam sessions like those scheduled to be held at the Mountain Heritage Center, provide an opportunity to exercise those musical chops and trade licks with the old and experienced, and new and just-learning.

Most players learn traditional songs in the same key, and then lend their own style to the piece. In a pick-up band, or jam session setting, where players are apt to rotate out, adaptability is crucial. Though a player may not know the song when it starts, he or she can pick up a few bars in, once the chord progression has been established.

“After you start playing together everybody just starts doing the same thing,” Deitz said.

Spawning from the jam session idea, three traditional community dances are planned to be held Feb. 10, March 10 and April 21.

No dancing experience is necessary to participate, and local callers will be on hand to direct the dances.

“Square dancers and buck dancers are invited to join the fun and teach their steps to others,” McDowell said.

The dances will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Grandroom of Western’s A.K. Hinds University Center. Musicians playing at the community jam sessions are invited to become part of the dances’ house band.

For more information, call the Mountain Heritage Center at 828.227.7129.