Since 2017, the group of musicians known as SongFarmers of Hinesburg jams at the Hinesburg
Library he first Thursday of every month.
Photo by Ella Weigel

Around 6 p.m., as the musicians snapped open their guitar cases and began tuning their banjos, a young girl peered into the community room of the Hinesburg library from the bookshelves. The group drew the girl’s curiosity as they chatted, set up music stands and spread sheet music on the floor.

Then, the SongFarmers started playing. The strums of their guitars and the twang of the banjos filled the room with a mix of folk, rock and Americana music.

The Carpenter-Carse Library community room door stays open during a SongFarmers jam for this very reason: so kids can “wander in and watch,” said Rik Palieri, leader of the Hinesburg SongFarmers and a longtime fixture in folk music in Vermont and beyond.

Rik Palieri, leader of the Hinesburg SongFarmers, at the Carptenter-Carse Library on April 6.

“Music is a birthright,” Palieri said following the April 6 SongFarmers jam session. “It’s something that belongs to all of us, even though we don’t see it that way, but it’s something that we all have inside us. We all can love music, to maybe hum a song, sing a song, tap your foot, clap your hands.”

He added, “This is the way that we can let that spirit out.”

Since summer 2017, the SongFarmers of Hinesburg have gathered from 6 to 8 p.m. on the first Thursday of every month at the Carpenter-Carse Library to let that spirit out and play. The jam is open to anyone who wants to join on an instrument or simply sit and enjoy the music. But it’s not only about the music; it’s about community.

As the name might suggest, the SongFarmers cultivate music. Like some might say of Vermont crops, the value of the group is that it’s organic, with music coming straight from the Hinesburg soil, without embellishment, Palieri said. When the weather gets warm, they play outside in the library yard.

“It really is growing communal music,” said SongFarmer Brian Yarwood, who plays banjo and guitar.

SongFarmers now has chapters across the country and overseas, in Ireland. According to Palieri, the seed of the idea was planted in 2016 during a conversation with fellow folk singer-songwriter, Michael Johnathon. The two spoke about the general state of music and the pressures of the industry.

They envisioned getting back to the root of “real music,” Palieri said. “This idea of the front porch, of bringing the music back, right into the community.”

Out of this grew the Front Porch Music Association, created to facilitate an inclusive and community-oriented jam, an improvised, unrehearsed session of musicians playing together.

At one of the group’s first gatherings in Tennessee, someone stood up and announced a plan to start a jam in their community. The SongFarmers name was inspired by the spot where the group played at those early sessions: the Song Farmer’s Stage.

“It sort of was like wildfire because all of these different people started these SongFarmer gatherings in their houses,” Palieri said. “They started it in libraries, they started it in all different types of venues — and now they’re all over the world.”

This year, the 67-year-old Palieri is marking his 50th year of performing with a tour and is scheduled to play in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee and Europe.

“I wanted to go back out on the road and visit those places that I spent most of my life,” he said.

Originally from New Jersey, the Hinesburg resident will soon receive a Lifetime Achievement Award on Saturday, April 29 from the New Jersey Folk Festival for his contributions to folk music.

It’s nice to see the world, but Palieri said he’s always happy to play close to home. “It was really important for me to be able to have a community right here where I live, instead of having to go and travel somewhere to play music.”

Even in his town, Palieri is far from the only accomplished SongFarmers performer. “There are a lot of people who come to our gathering in Hinesburg that are professional musicians,” he said, “but they choose to come to our gathering to make our community a better place.”

SongFarmers, though, makes room for anyone who loves music, even those who are just starting out. They can practice a new piece or fall back on the comfort of familiar songs, Palieri said. “We’re not performers here, we’re facilitators and cheerleaders.”

Yarwood, 60, has played with about half of the circle for 30 years, he said, but “it’s really nice when people you don’t know show up.”

Jordan Buntain, 47, joined the SongFarmers for the first time at the April jam. He met some of the musicians at another event about a month earlier — when he picked up his guitar for the first time in five years. He said it felt good to play again. “Especially with these guys, it’s simple. It’s easy stuff.”

Every jam has its own set of rules – often unspoken ones. Some focus on certain genres of music or types of instruments. Yarwood recounted his very first jam, at the now-defunct Daily Bread in Richmond, where he brought an instrument that didn’t fit the genre. “I walked in with a five-string banjo to an Irish session,” he said, recalling the eight musicians who “looked at me and glowered and went right back to what they were doing without saying a word.”

At some bluegrass jams ukuleles are frowned upon, Yarwood said. “Whereas here, everything is fine. It makes no difference as long as you don’t have to plug it in”

This month, the SongFarmers played ukuleles, stand-up bass, violin, guitars, mandolins and banjos.

The SongFarmers do have rules. One is no microphone. That’s mostly to control the volume for library goers, but also to allow everyone to hear one other.

The other rule: Everyone in the circle has a chance to choose a song to play, but they can pass to the next person. This month, the group picked tunes by Willie Nelson, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Johnny Cash.

Many of the SongFarmer musicians fill the time between the monthly jam with other groups. For Kendrick Kite, a Montpelier guitar player, the April session was his second jam of the day. Carol Jean Suitor, 84, and Jim Wick, 82, live in Wake Robin Retirement Community and have a group that meets once a week.

“There’s another little group that practices once a week with a fiddle,” Suitor said. “We’re all pretty much beginners, but we have fun.”

The SongFarmers’ nonmusical interaction, Palieri said, is as important as the music — the bantering between songs, lingering afterward to make plans for the next jam, cracking of jokes and subsequent laughing.

It’s the music, though, that brings everyone together in the first place.

Read the original story in The Citizen