The event was started at the Baraboo Clarion Hotel and Convention Center in 2013 by Brian Ray, an accomplished mandolinist and bass player with musical ties to Nashville, California, and Wisconsin. Brian was a founding member of the Briar Pickers (old-time), and This is the Squirrel Hunters (bluegrass), which performed around Southern Wisconsin. Brian knew how to raise the level of all the musicians he played with and was an inspiration for many with his infectious enthusiasm and signature orange mandolins. When he was living in California Brian attended the Great 48, a 2-day hotel jam event in Bakersfield. Bluegrass and old-time musicians would pack the Marriott hotel (and the Amtrak San Joaquins) to share songs, music, and talent. In addition to days of jamming, the event offered stage time for bands that wanted to sign up. After moving to the Midwest, Brian wanted to create a similar experience for Midwestern musicians.
In the early years, the String Gathering included limited performances by acts such as the High 48s, Art Stevenson & Highwater (bluegrass) and the New Bad Habits (old-time) who played ticketed shows at the Al Ringling Theater in downtown Baraboo. An evening square dance was also held in the hotel banquet hall.
Baraboo, like Bakersfield, turned out to be an ideal setting for the String Gathering to attract musicians from all around Wisconsin as well as Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, and Minnesota. There were so many musicians lining the hallways that the Clarion hotel put up signs that said No Jamming in the Elevators. A hotel guest climbing the stairs might hear Three Forks of Cheat from a calico-tuned fiddle transmogrifying into Big Mon smoking out of mandolin and resonator guitar.
The unpretentious Baraboo Clarion Hotel exuded a warm Central-Wisconsin hospitality. The hotel generously opened 2-room deluxe suites to its musical horde of guests. The Jacuzzis had excellent acoustics and were a good location for the stand-up bass when the room was otherwise crammed with bluegrass pickers. Turns out that they were also big enough for a 4-piece old-time string band, if everyone was on friendly terms and the fiddler was positioned pointy side out.
Stage performances at the annual String Gathering lost attendance after a few years, a clear indication that participants just wanted to play music, not unlike a 6-year-old preferring a bowl of Lucky Charms without the cereal. Plenty of other events held by regional Bluegrass Associations offered a full slate of performance opportunities, band development exercises, and big-name headliners. The String Gathering was different: it did not cater to audiences, but to the communion of musicians deep in their art. If creativity had a smell, it would be warm rosewood, rosin, and hotel carpeting.
Brian retired from organizing the String Gathering in 2016, and the event took a one-year hiatus. The hole left that first April was deep enough to inspire a collective of old-time and bluegrass musicians to reimagine the event. They held their first event in Portage in 2017. It was a smaller gathering and included mostly old-time music in a convention room with the gravitational draw of Lynn ‘Chirps’ Smith, an influential Midwestern fiddler who played with the New Bad Habits and the Volo Bogtrotters. The Portage hotel was good, but the space did not support the diversity of smaller bluegrass jams that would carry on late into the night.
The following year the String Gathering moved back to the Baraboo Clarion and added a second weekend in November. There were still no performances or dances, but the styles of music branched out to include Irish, Cajun, Acoustic Swing, and traditional folk singing in addition to the standard Old-Time and Bluegrass. A loyal community of musicians from the region formed around these twice-yearly events, who bonded over hours and hours of shared songs.
After a pandemic-induced hiatus, the String Gathering came roaring back in April 2022, still at the Baraboo Clarion. The November event was retired in 2022, but starting in 2023 the event is expanded to two full days in the spirit of the Great 48 Bakersfield jam.
excerpted from an article by Emily Beebe, First published in the March 2023 edition of MadFolk News, the newsletter of the Madison Folk Music Society. Republished with permission.