Music fans celebrate
BUTLER TWP — The January Ice Jam bluegrass festival celebrated its 20th anniversary in vibrant fashion Saturday.
“It just keeps getting better every year,” said Amy George, program director of the Bluegrass Relief Fund, which holds the Ice Jam. “The bluegrass community is growing, and once you come to one of them you want to keep coming back. It's contagious.”
Twenty-eight bands took the stage at the Butler Days Inn on Friday and Saturday to delight enthusiastic bluegrass fans. One of those fans, Drew Richards, came with his family from Oakmont for the fifth straight year.
“It's traditional music being played in a ballroom with chandeliers,” he said. “Incongruous, one might say. There's a lot of talent on that stage.”
While Richards said he enjoyed big performances from bands like South79 and Lonesome Lost & Foggy, many other musicians met up in the hotel's rooms for impromptu jam sessions.
Two such musicians were Steve Ludwig, a guitarist for the Casual Hobos of Pittsburgh, and Howard Davidson, who plays for Glass Run Road, also of Pittsburgh.
Davidson plays an instrument called the U-Bass, which he said is becoming more popular.
“I think you'll see more of it,” he said. “It gives you the tone and the sound of the upright bass.”
Davidson has been into bluegrass since the 1970s, he said, when he first heard the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. He was one of many longtime musicians at the Ice Jam festival.
Cameron Buterbaugh of Cherry Tree was playing guitar in another room with Mark Kerecman, on the banjo, and Mike Milano, who traveled from Portland, Conn., for his first Ice Jam experience.
While Buterbaugh led a rendition of James King's slow song “Bed by the Window,” Kerecman and Milano, who had never heard the song, caught on quickly.
“I'm watching his hands and I can tell the chord changes, so when he changed I knew what chord to go to,” Milano said.
It's these kinds of jam sessions that forge lasting relationships that are strengthened by repeat visits to the bluegrass festival year after year.
“There's just so many people that come here,” said Buterbaugh, who has been coming to Ice Jam for more than a decade. “You got to develop friendships here. It's hard not to.”
Davidson also spoke on bluegrass' bonding power.
“Everybody loves the music,” he said. “It is the bluegrass music that is true American music. It keeps people together of all ages and all different kinds of politics.”
One family that has experienced the tight-knit feel bluegrass music can bring about is the Anderson family of New Galilee, Pa.
The seven Anderson siblings, six sisters and one brother, are all either children or young adults, and have performed at the group Echo Valley at the Ice Jam for three straight years. It's a gospel bluegrass group with a Celtic influence.
“It brings us real close together as a family, and it's a lot of fun,” said Emily Anderson, 18, who is a vocalist and fiddler for Echo Valley. “It's one of our favorite things to do.”
Her sister, Elizabeth Anderson, agreed.
“It's like family here,” she said. “You know everybody, everybody knows you, and if you don't know them, you eventually get to know them.”
Proceeds from the Ice Jam benefit the Bluegrass Relief Fund, which helps families who have suffered financial hardships due to injuries, illnesses, loss of employment or loss of a loved one.
