String Band returns to The Homestead’s Music on the Mountain series

By Ross Boissoneau

Sun contributor

The next Music On The Mountain concert at The Homestead will be a throwback.

On July 8, the Blue Water Ramblers will take the stage, performing their mix of traditional favorites in the folk tradition, songs by Woody Guthrie, Tom T. Hall, John Denver and others, along with their own originals. “We come out of the Woodie Guthrie-Pete Seeger folk and bluegrass tradition,” says bandleader R.H. “Bear” Berends.

That’s not the only way in which the Grand Rapids-based band can be seen as a throwback. The Blue Water Ramblers played the very first season of Music On The Mountain back in 2015. Berends is excited to return to The Homestead, as he fondly remembers the setting atop the resort’s ski hill, overlooking the sun shining and eventually setting over the sparkling waters of Lake Michigan.

“What I remember is it’s such a unique and beautiful venue. The audience gets to see the water,” Berends says, noting with a laugh that his only complaint is the band doesn’t get the same view as the attendees.

The Blue Water Ramblers got their start back in 2002, picking up the pieces after the band Beats Settin’ Home splintered. Berends and Banjo-Jim – banjo player Jim Foerch – first teamed up in that band in 1993. Berends joined Banjo-Jim and Beats Settin’ Home at the Wheatland Music Festival in Remus in 1993. “I wanted to sing with Banjo-Jim, so I learned all his songs and taught him mine, and here we are.” They enjoyed playing and singing together so much that teaming up again seemed like a no-brainer.

The band includes Berends, Banjo-Jim, Nate Myers on mandolin, Connor Meston on fiddle and Jesse Lynn on bass. He’s the son of original bassist California Dan Lynn, who still plays with the band on occasion, such as festivals and shows in the U.P., where he now lives.

With so much history already behind them, and the fact he, Banjo-Jim and mandolinist Myers are all in their 70s, why does Berends continue to play? For Berends it’s an easy question to answer. “It’s so much fun,” he says simply.

Yet it’s more than that. He says the response they get from audiences stays with them long after the show.

“When people come up afterwards and say, ‘I’ve had such a bad day, I needed to be lifted up. Thank you so much.’ With the music we try to inspire, put a smile on your face.”

He says following a show some years ago in Auburn Hills, a concert-goer spoke with him following the performance. She told Berends that she had been out of his home for a year and a half and the show inspired her to change her life. “C’mon, this is just folk music,” Berends says wonderingly. “What a blessing.”

Berends says the band’s music is a blend of traditional folk, bluegrass and country, with him and Banjo-Jim sharing vocals. “It’s a traditional Appalachian string band,” he says. A typical set includes originals and folk favorites, along with three or four fiddle tunes, instrumentals from the Appalachian tradition.

Their originals follow in the style of the music’s forebears, though they reflect modern life. “Our repertoire comes right out of our Michigan life experiences and the history of the Great Lakes. We think our hero, Woody Guthrie, would approve because we’re singing the people’s songs about the people’s lives and they can join right in,” Berends says in press materials.

The band has released five recordings, which, like its shows, mix originals with the tried-and-true. As the description for 2006’s Coming Home says, the band sings songs of “the lakes, love, life, lumberjacks, and the land. We do some political lampooning, pick bluegrass, sing shanties, boogie-woogie down the highway, play authentic Michigan calypso and even rock a polka for the shanty boys.”

He is looking forward to the show and hopes there’s a good crowd. “You ride a chairlift to the show. I can’t believe anybody who lives within a 30-mile radius” wouldn’t love it, he says.

This will the third show of the season in the series, which takes place atop Bay Mountain at The Homestead. The show begins at 7 p.m. Tickets are $22. For tickets and more information, go to tinyurl.com/Tickets-MOTM.