After dinner and enriching conversation (a treasured art!) we pack up and go to O’Hurley’s General Store in Shepherdstown where owner, Jay, hosts a jam. “It seems we do this every week whether we need to or not!” he comments to me.
Maddie MacNeil is joyfully there with her mountain dulcimer and voice, Sam has already taken up residence beside her with his purple heart dulcimer; Nick has brought only whistles tonight (“gives me a smaller footprint”). Two mandolinists are next, then I sit at the West end of the open square. Don sits in front of me to the left, playing a beautifully in-laid Lariveé guitar, a baritone guitar and a banjo. Next are the chocolatiers from Martinsburg—he on fiddle and banjo, she on floor-sized harp. A stand-up bass player (who also plays with a bow, I say admiringly!) is back by the upright grand piano, another flute/piccolo/fiddle player is next, then back around to the host, Jay, who also plays one of Sam’s hammered dulcimers. Maddie is now beside a cello player (who next week is bid to bring her French horn!)
(Jay O'Hurley, Maddie MacNeil, cellist, Sam Rizzetta and Nick Blanton)
This “inner circle” is surrounded on two sides by a large crowd of seating on-lookers, the audience, who are bid to be silent when the singing or quiet playing starts, but encouraged to talk by a posted sign “between songs.”
We go around the circle choosing a variety of old-time, celtic and hymntunes, regularly interspersed by players’ requests for Sam’s original tunes. After a few hours and when the audience has dwindled, Sam asks me to sing one.
The only tune that comes to mind is the one that has been coursing through me for the past week, Jean Ritchie’s “West Virginia Mining Disaster.” I mention the title, he nods and I sing.
Gratitude is the response from those in the room.
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