On the outskirts of an impromptu jam session, 14-year-old Cliff Wright jogs past his little brother, Matt, flicking him on the arm with his middle finger, then bends down to open a fiddle case.

Matt, 11, standing with his hands in his jeans pockets, and his ballcap pulled low, takes a small jump back, suddenly awoken from his trance-like state, having been intently watching a cluster of men five times his age pick an old traditional tune.

Cliff looks over his left shoulder with a sideways grin. Matt, still slightly stunned, slowly removes his hands from his pockets and flicks back, his finger landing in the middle of Cliff’s bicep. The two grin at each other and Cliff makes a little hop, spin motion to bring his right hand — the flicking hand — back down on Matt’s arm.

With a flinch, Matt shakes his head and makes a flicking motion in the air. He’s saying how he can’t do it as well, can’t quite get enough impact. Cliff shows him how it’s more of a flick and pull away motion rather than a flat thud.

They both turn and unpack their instruments, Matt opening the case to an upright bass nearly twice his size. Joining the group — a pick-up mix of whomever brought their banjo, guitar, bass or singing voice — Cliff takes an open seat and watches to learn the song’s chord progression. Another fiddle player drags his chair across the circle to sit next to Cliff then purposely leans forward so that Cliff can see his hands as he plays.

Matt, standing just outside the circle next to two other bass players, reaches nearly a foot above his head to press the right string, his face showing a sense of comfort mixed with detachment. One might say it seems almost natural.

“It wasn’t like that six months ago,” Matt says.

Matt didn’t come into music quite as fast as his brother did. At the age of 5, Cliff proclaimed he wanted to learn how to play the fiddle. In support of the notion, his grandfather said that if that was the case, he had something for him. He took him downstairs and gave him his first fiddle.

“It’s different, there’s not a lot of fiddle players,” Cliff said.

Raised on Charlie Daniels, the Doobie Brothers, 38 Special, Lynyrd Skynyrd, George Jones “and the Eagles, don’t forget the Eagles,” Cliff says, the brothers from Waynesville developed a well-rounded appreciation for traditional bluegrass and classic rock.

“I wanted football players and I got musicians,” said the boys’ father, Charles. “Now my head swells up every time they play.”

Cliff started taking lessons — formal and informal — from local musicians S.T. Swanger and Scott Mahaffey, who took the young boy under their wing. While Cliff practiced, Matt, unbeknownst, did too. Off in a side room, Matt listened to the tunes and drew from what he had learned on the fiddle, guitar and piano.

And one day, well, it just kind of came together.

“Out of nowhere Matthew finds a bass line,” Charles said.

The brothers have become regulars at Buncombe County’s musical institution Mrs. Nelia Hyatt’s Music House on Brevard Road. The informal gathering of bluegrass and traditional musicians began more than 50 years ago.

The story goes that Nelia, originally from Andrews, was visiting her aunt on Balsam Mountain when a local boy who had borrowed a gun to go hunting, came to return it. The borrowed gun sparked a year-long courtship and finally the two were married. During the war, Mr. Hyatt got a job working in the shipyards — a job he wanted to keep, but his father convinced him otherwise, he should come back and take on with the railroad.

Hyatt began working down in South Carolina, calling his friends to get together for jam sessions whenever he came home. These sessions marked the start of what would later become the longest running bluegrass jam in the state.

But three months into the railroad job, when Hyatt was working on a brake car, the load shifted and pinned him against another car. The accident nearly severed Hyatt’s legs, but he insisted that doctors sew them back on, that he would walk again.

Hyatt managed to keep his legs, but things were never quite the same. With a background in carpentry, he took to making musical instruments.

Mr. Hyatt is long-since gone, but Nelia has continued the musical tradition, opening her home to 50 or more strangers-come-friends every Thursday night. The jam sessions are as routine as Wednesday night church services.

The Wright brothers have been joining in for going on three years now, despite the half-hour drive from Waynesville. Their local community doesn’t have the same kind of organized but informal sessions, they say — for the most part, sessions are seasonal, and subject to holidays.

“There’s nothing in Waynesville,” Cliff said.

When the boys first came to Nelia’s, they unpacked their instruments and took seats in the back. When the players — most all nearing antique stage themselves — finished their song they called the boys on up into the circle.

“They took them in just like that,” their father Charles said.

Which, beyond just making music, is the point of Nelia’s Music House — passing on the tradition from old to young, giving the young at least a sense of what their roots are.

“I hope they stay in it. It’s in them and if they leave it, they’ll come back to it,” Nelia said, of the Wright brothers and their talents.

Capturing and preserving the Music House is the latest project for Asheville-based film producer Rod Murphy, director of “Greater Southbridge,” a documentary about Murphy’s Massachusetts hometown that premiered at the Asheville Film Festival last year. Reading about the Music House in the Boston Globe’s Travel Section was one of the things that brought Murphy to the area.

After a 12-month shoot that largely draws on the Wright brothers to illustrate the tradition of handing things down, Murphy is now in the editing process, with plans to debut the film at this year’s AFF. A soundtrack of tunes recorded at the Music House and a still photo exhibit are planned as companion pieces.

The film, along with this past weekend’s all-day jam fest in honor of Nelia’s 88th birthday, bear ulterior motives however. The project doesn’t just aim to chronicle and archive the Music House, but to strengthen the fight for preservation.

The Music House, located just off Interstate 26, is threatened by developers — from car dealers to the NC. Department of Transportation’s plans to widen the interstate. Already road noise roars as truckers and travelers pass the tiny house and its outbuildings on their way between the Biltmore Square Mall and Interstate 40 exit by the Farmer’s Market.

The hope is that the Music House — and of course Nelia herself — will stick it out. Cliff hasn’t decided yet if he’ll be an engineer or a musician, but either way, he knows he’ll still answer the Music House call.

“I’d say I’ll still be coming over here,” he said.