Berkeley Old-Time Music Convention

At noon on Saturday, September 19, 2026, string bands took their turns in the Mystery Room, on the second floor of the Berkeley Central Library at 2090 Kittredge Street. The prizes, the schedule said, were agricultural, and the contest ran until “3-ish.” Three floors up, Alice Gerrard read from her book, Custom Made Woman: A Life in Traditional Music. After her, Justin Robinson, billed as an original Carolina Chocolate Drop, hosted an open jam on the same floor. In the first-floor teen room, members of the Manning Mud Stompers ran a youth jam. Every daytime event at the library that day was free.

That Saturday was the fourth day of the Berkeley Old Time Music Convention, held each September in halls, a library, a park and private houses across the city. The 2026 convention ran September 16 through 20, with an open jam at the library the Tuesday before. Paul Kotapish, writing in San Francisco Classical Voice in 2017, defined old-time music as the traditional dance tunes and songs of the rural South and Midwest: fiddles and banjos, “plaintive singing, shady porches, and barn dances.” He wrote that it is played collectively, often in unison, rather than in hot solos.

Jams in houses, squares at Ashkenaz

The convention opens at Ashkenaz, the music and dance hall at 1317 San Pablo Avenue near Gilman. At the 2026 Welcome Square Dance on Wednesday, Greg and Jere Canote of Seattle and Forty Drop Few of Portland played while a rotation of callers took turns, and the Corn Likkers hosted an open jam in the back studio.

Thursday moved to La Peña Cultural Center on Shattuck Avenue. Members of Forty Drop Few taught workshops in Southwest fiddle and classic banjo. W.B. Reid and Bonnie Zahnow hosted a jam next door at the Starry Plough, and Brandon Godman hosted another in the La Peña lounge. The evening concert brought Joseph Decosimo and Stephanie Coleman, Godman and friends, and the new cohort of Black Banjo & Fiddle Fellows.

Friday belonged to the Freight, on Addison Street. Workshops covered two-finger banjo, fiddle, and, from Robinson, “How to be Rooted in Tradition.” The Canotes hosted a free jam on the sidewalk out front, and the schedule asked people to bring a chair if they could. The evening concert put Gerrard on stage with Reed Stutz and Suzy Thompson.

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday afternoons, open jams met in private homes. Anyone who emails for the address gets it by automated reply. The schedule calls these jams “a great place to meet people, visit, play tunes” and says they have been an important part of the convention for many years. In 2017 Thompson told San Francisco Classical Voice that most scheduled jams are “hosted”: an experienced musician keeps things moving, suggests tunes many people know, and makes “newcomers and shy people feel welcome.” On the chance to sit in with touring players, she said: “For old time players, it’s the equivalent of going to Tanglewood and getting to play string quartets with Yo-Yo Ma. That does not happen the rest of the year.”

Saturday night is the square dance at Ashkenaz. In 2026 it began at six with tricky squares called by Janine Smith, listed as a “Deep Cut Dance for Those That Know Their Stuff.” Evie Ladin taught clogging at 7:30. At eight the dance began, with Skillet Licorice, Robinson and Aaron Cooper, and Decosimo, Coleman and friends playing, and Smith and Ladin calling. Mark Olson and Penny Critchlow led a song circle in the back room. Thompson described the dance in 2017: “If you want something physical, hot and sweaty, the Saturday night square dance is really fun, no experience is necessary, the callers will teach all the dances and moves, which are not hard.”

Sunday morning brings a free family dance at Ashkenaz, with dances the schedule promised “even babes in arms can do.” In 2026 Smith called it to the Manning Mud Stompers, a band of students and former students of Berkeley’s Manning Music. Workshops followed, including fiddle rags with Greg Canote and ukulele with Jere. The convention closed in Ohlone Park, across from the North Berkeley BART station, with three hours of open jamming and visiting. “Plenty of space for jamming!” the schedule read. “Bring a chair or 2 if you can.”

The 35th Annual, held for the first time

The contest is the oldest part. In 1968 a loose-knit group of volunteers and musicians held a fiddle and banjo contest in Constitution Park, which Berkeley called Provo Park, and named it “The 35th Annual Berkeley Old Time Fiddler’s Convention.” Rita Weill told its origin in her notes for the Folkways LP Berkeley Farms. She wrote that it was conceived in the back of a Volkswagen bus on the way to a party in Marin County, by people who wanted the music and interplay of Southern fiddle-banjo contests “without the competition and corruption extant there.” It had one rule: “No fair electric instruments.” At the sign-up tables people asked who was sponsoring it. “Nobody! We’re just having it, that’s all.” The park, Weill wrote, was bounded by the Police Department, City Hall, the jail and Berkeley High School.

Winnie Winston, a banjo player in from New York that summer, wrote an account of the 1968 afternoon. His old playing partner David Cohen, then playing keyboards for Country Joe and the Fish, had told him about the contest the day before. In the park Cohen introduced him to Augustus Stanley Owsley.

Then the judges took their seats. John Lundberg arrived in a pin-striped suit and spats, carrying a silver cane and shouting “Here come de Judge!” With him were “Big” John Campbell, Campbell Coe and Richard Greene. They were given a bottle of Wild Turkey and, Winston recalled, became rather drunk. Points were awarded and deducted on criteria never announced, and the Poison Coyote Kid got four points for his name. A band called Ye Golden Toad, about fifteen people, played Tibetan bells, whistles and a long horn that rested on the ground. Rick Shubb entered the banjo contest with his wife: she played the left-hand part on his banjo, and he played the right.

At about five the judges gave Winston first prize in banjo: “Anyone who comes all the way from New York deserves to win.” He took home a ribbon of Indian fabric and a tuna can lid, and five pounds of rutabagas. Second place went to a man who was not there. “He would have won were he here,” the judges said. His six pounds of rutabagas were thrown to the audience one at a time, and some people tried eating them raw.

The weights change with the teller. Weill gave first prize as three pounds and second as five. Berkeleyside has reported one bag for first and two for second, “and so on.” Weill also recorded a prize given to someone for traveling the farthest, who then lost points for being from New York City. Charles Perry reviewed the 1968 contest in the August 10, 1968, Rolling Stone. Winston quotes him calling it “the first totally bullshit competition in a public place.”

The numbering ran backward. The convention’s own history and Winston call 1969 the 17th Annual and 1970 the 22nd; Weill lists them the other way round. In 1969, Winston wrote, the prizes were home-baked pies. In 1970 first prize was an expense-paid trip to Emeryville: two bus tokens and a meal ticket to the Doggie Diner. Weill remembered Jody Stecher earning five points for every fret missing on his fretless banjo. His prize was a custard pie that looked ordinary until it was cut open and showed psychedelic colors inside.

Weill wrote her notes on July 27, 1971. By then, she said, the Chamber of Commerce was urging them to continue, and television stations and the Canadian Film Board planned to film the event. “We just may not hold our convention this year because of it.” According to the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, the annual events ended with 1970. Weill had promised Mike Seeger that when he came west, they would call it the First Annual. Rick Shubb told Winston there were plans for a real First Annual, to be held in Seattle.

A small budget and a dancing Muldaur

“I’d been hearing about these events since I moved here in 1973,” Suzy Thompson told Berkeleyside in 2011. Her husband, the flat-picking guitarist Eric Thompson, had competed in the Provo Park contests.

Her accounts of the revival differ in the details. In 2017 she said the Farmers’ Market had asked her to produce a bluegrass festival, but its budget was too small. She remembered the old contests and thought a string band contest “would be both fun and cheap,” held in the same park. In 2023 Berkeleyside reported that the Ecology Center had asked her, with $300. That would barely cover one bluegrass band, “so we put on the string band contest instead, and it was a hit,” she said. “And we’ve just kept adding things.”

The founding year varies too. Thompson’s biography and the convention’s 2025 artist notes give 2003. Berkeleyside in 2018 had her reviving the contest in 2003 and launching the convention the next year, with backing from Berkeley’s Civic Arts Commission. ACTA dates the festival’s current form to 2004. By Thompson’s recollection, the year after the first contest added a concert at the Freight & Salvage and a dance at Ashkenaz. “Then it grew ‘til it got to the current size and length and we made a conscious decision not to expand further.”

The Squirrelly Stringband won the contest in 2004, playing their first public gig. They played so hard that Maria Muldaur “got up and started dancing so enthusiastically that her slip ended up around her ankles,” Thompson recalled. For years after, the Berkeley Farmers’ Market String Band Contest was held in Civic Center Park, the former Provo Park, in front of a defunct fountain. In 2017 San Francisco Classical Voice counted fifteen acoustic bands bribing the judges for baskets of goods from the adjacent market. Thompson summed up the spirit in 2011: “Let’s have a good time, let’s make good music, and not take it too seriously.”

Contestants come back year after year. In 2018 Thompson said Sydney Roberts had entered every year since she was about five. In 2023 the Squirrelly Stringband played the big Saturday dance at Ashkenaz, and one player’s daughter, a Berkeley High student, judged the contest. In 2020 the convention was held online. The poster archive runs from Hank Bradley’s design in 1968 and Rick Shubb’s in 1969 and 1970 to Dave Murray’s, nearly every year from 2005.

The fellows and the farewell

The Black Banjo & Fiddle Fellowship is a collaboration between the convention and the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music. Thompson designed it with Angela Wellman and Karen Celia. It is a two-year paid fellowship that trains Black musicians in old-time music and its history, and it also trains them as teachers. Jake Blount, Rhiannon Giddens, Earl White, Dom Flemons and Tony Thomas mentored the first fellows, Patrice Strahan, Darcy Ford-James and Joseph Z. Johnson. In 2026 Ford-James moderated the Black Old Time Musicians panel at the library, and the new cohort played at La Peña: Samaria Marley, Shanice Richards, Sam Wilkins and Genell Zuciya.

At the 2025 convention, in a rare solo set at the Freight, Thompson bade farewell as director. A year later she was back on the Freight stage beside Gerrard. In 2018 Thompson said Gerrard had played the convention at least six times. “She’s the one we all want to be like when we grow up.”