Dixie chapter old-time jam

On the second and fourth Wednesday of each month, at six in the evening, the Dixie Chapter of the Utah Old Time Fiddlers holds its jam session at Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church, 611 North 2450 East, in St. George. The chapter serves the greater St. George area of Southern Utah. Its chair is Lin Brown. In a chapter report, the chapter wrote that it “continues to enjoy the company and music of those who are lifetime members, along with newbies.”

The association’s chapters page posts an open invitation under its Ogden chapter, not under Dixie. It says the public may come at no cost, come and go freely, and bring any “fiddle compatible” instrument, naming guitar, banjo, harmonica, mandolin and dulcimer. That page states no such terms for the St. George jam.

A full room at the pioneer museum

The jam is the chapter’s practice night. Its public face is the performance. On March 21, 2026, the Dixie Chapter played a Third Weekend Event at the McQuarrie Memorial Pioneer Museum, kept by the Daughters of Utah Pioneers at 145 North 100 East. The museum’s account describes a full room of attendees who tapped their toes and sang along. The museum chose the program for tunes that would have been familiar to early settlers and pioneer communities, and it recorded the performance for those who missed it. The same account calls the chapter “a group celebrating over 50 years of entertaining audiences across Southern Utah.”

The chapter also plays in less formal rooms. It ended 2022 with a Christmas party at the Golden Corral in St. George. “After eating, we were allowed to play and sing, and people from the restaurant came to watch and enjoy the music,” the chapter reported. Its 2023 season of performances was to open on February 3 at a rehabilitation center in St. George.

A neighbor’s invitation, February 2000

Jack Jeppson wrote the chapter’s own account of how he came to it. In February 2000 he and his wife, Jeanette, were talking with their neighbor, Don Jasperson, who told them he played with the Old Time Fiddlers and invited them to a jam. “The people were so nice, and we enjoyed the jam so much we decided it would be a lot of fun to join with them,” Jeppson wrote. The couple had been taking their music on the road in winter, to southern Texas and the Yuma area. “Then, we decided it would be nice just to stay at home. So, we really have enjoyed being able to keep playing around our home St. George.”

In 2001 the Jeppsons travelled with the Utah Old Time Fiddlers to Weiser, Idaho, when Utah was host state for the National Fiddle Contest there. Jeppson remembered the fiddlers competing by day and putting on shows for everyone at night. The Utah players also entertained at rest homes in the area and marched in the Weiser parade. In other years the Dixie chapter went with the Fiddlers to Bryce Canyon and played many shows there. It also performed and camped at Marysville, Panguitch and Canyonville.

Jack Jeppson was made chapter chairman in 2012 and served to 2022. When the couple stepped down as Chairs at the start of 2023, the chapter report, signed by Lin Brown and Jack Jeppson, said they had overseen the chapter “as long as they can remember.” The report added that “there is nothing they do not know about music, old time songs, and instruments.” They kept coming to jams and performances and handed what they knew to the new Chair, Lin Brown. “I feel she will do a very good job!” Jeppson wrote.

That same report announced a new meeting place, the Shadowbrook Clubhouse in St. George, on the same Wednesday schedule. The chapter’s page now lists Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church.

The statewide body and its tapes

The Dixie jam is one of five chapter jams under the statewide association. The others meet in Delta and Fillmore, Ogden, Salt Lake and Utah County. John Shupe organized the Utah Old Time Fiddlers Association in 1975. One of its founding members was Dale Pendleton, born in Rigby, Idaho, in 1921. He grew up in Wanship and Coalville, Utah, and learned music from his father, a blacksmith who also fiddled. Pendleton worked to keep older tunes alive by recording them. His collection at Weber State University’s Stewart Library holds association newsletters from the 1980s and handwritten tune titles such as “Pioneer Happy Club Quadrille” and “Mesa Winter Visitor’s Song.” It also holds cassette recordings of the Utah Oldtime Fiddlers at Bryce Canyon on July 12 and 13, 1984, and at Cannonville and Kanab on July 14, 1984. Pendleton was inducted into the Ol’ Time Fiddlers Hall of Fame at the Utah Cowboy and Heritage Museum in 2014 and died October 26, 2015.

Long memberships turn up in the local papers as well. Samuel Robert Gunter of Washington, Utah, was a Korean War veteran who worked thirty-five years for the Utah Department of Transportation. He died in April 2013 at 84. His obituary in The Spectrum & Daily News records that he had joined The Old Time Fiddlers more than 35 years before and “enjoyed playing his guitar and singing with them.”