COYLE — Musician Bryan Bowers will perform at Concerts in the Woods at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
The concert will be in the Laurel B. Johnson Community Center at 923 Hazel Point Road.
Admission is by donation. The all-ages concert will offer complimentary cookies and coffee at intermission.
Bowers “has created a niche for himself by using an autoharp instead of the usual guitar as accompaniment for his folk songs,” said Norm Johnson, concert series organizer.
“This style of playing was first made famous by Mother Maybelle Carter of the legendary Carter Family which was formed in 1927. Bryan has kept this tradition alive and enhanced it with his own story songs and story telling.”
According to his website at www.somagency.com/bryan-bowers/, Bowers was born in Yorktown, Va., and raised in New Bohemia, where he learned to sing call-and-answer songs while tagging along with field workers and gandy dancers.
“The music I heard while working in the fields was mesmerizing,” he said. “And, I’d see the gandy dancers coming down the tracks, setting the rails and getting their ties straight. You’ve heard that song ‘Whup Boys, Can’t you line ’em?, Chack a lack.’ Whup Boys, can’t you line ’em? was the call the leader would sing. Chack a lack was the bounce- back of the hammer after falling on the pin. I just thought that music was something that everyone did. It was years later that I realized what I’d been raised around.”
It wasn’t long before Bowers encountered the autoharp. He moved to Seattle in 1971 and played for coins as a street singer and in bars for the right to pass the hat. Since then, his work has earned him induction into Frets Magazine’s First Gallery of the Greats.
In 1993, he was the first living member inducted into the Autoharp Hall of Fame.
In 2003, he organized and co-produced Autoharp Legacy, bringing together 55 autoharp players and creating a three-CD set on autoharp music.
In 2006 Bryan’s landmark recording, “Bristlecone Pine,” was released on Seattle Sounds with distribution assistance by Plectrafone Records. “Crabby Old Man” was released in 2011. Bryan Bowers’ “Live at Winterfolk 2015” is his most recent recording.
For more information about the concert, contact Johnson at 360-765-3449 or see http://www.coyleconcerts.com/.
