WAMA Pickersfest, Oakview Grange, Centralia/Winlock WA

At noon on the Thursday before the first full weekend of August, the entry gate opens at Oakview Grange on North Pearl Street, at the north edge of Centralia. Volunteers of the Washington Acoustic Music Association (WAMA) sell tickets there and put a colored wristband on every arrival. The color shows how many days have been paid for. Campers pull into the mowed field on the north side of the hall, with rigs in one area and tents in their own, and the festival asks that the shade be left for the tents. It is dry camping, with no open fires and no showers. The festival officially begins on Friday, but in the words of its own pages, “the jamming, fun, and camping begin on Thursday.”

Jams, workshops, and the grange kitchen

The stage carries bluegrass, old-time, swing, choro, Celtic, cowboy, and country acts. The festival gives as much room to what happens off it: instructional workshops, open mics, unscheduled jams around the campsites, and genre jams for old-time, Celtic, and swing players running side by side. The old-time jam works mostly from fiddle tunes on banjo, fiddle, and guitar. Organizers note that someone may also turn up with a bass, washboard, spoons, bones, or jug, and they print pamphlets of the tunes. Some people, the site says, come to the festival only for the jams. Jammers are told to bring a music stand and a cushion, because the grange’s folding chairs are “a bit hard” and outside chairs are not allowed in the hall. For those who neither jam nor take workshops, there is cornhole. Listeners who want to dance may do so at the side or back of the auditorium.

According to WAMA’s 2025 announcement, the workshops cover guitar, mandolin, bass, fiddle, banjo, and songwriting at no added charge. A 2023 notice said they were taught by members of the headlining bands. Daily Chronicle photographs captioned Saturday, Aug. 2, show violinist Ranger Sciacca leading an improv workshop, Robyn Stutzman leading one on banjo, guitarist Kenny Smith playing while he taught, and string players carrying their cases across the grounds to class.

Meals are served in the grange dining area. They are cooked, in the festival’s words, by “the wonderful women who stepped in to support us when we relocated to the Oakview Grange in 2024.” The concession runs from noon Friday through Sunday breakfast and takes cash only, as do performers’ CDs and the 50/50 raffle. There is no ATM on the grounds, though the small market across the road might have one. WAMA sells chilled water for a dollar a bottle at the info booth. “It does get hot in August,” the FAQ says. Each year an acoustic instrument is raffled. Sunday is free to the public, with two performances between 10:00 and 11:45 in the morning, and the festival closes at noon.

Lauderdale, Ritchey, and a contra dance

The 2026 festival ran July 31 through Aug. 2. It was headlined by Jim Lauderdale, a two-time Grammy winner and member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and by Jimmy Ritchey, a Nashville producer and songwriter raised in Centralia. The festival’s archive says Ritchey “cut his teeth performing at fairs, rodeos, and honky-tonks across the Pacific Northwest.” The Chronicle reported that he has worked with Vince Gill, Randy Travis, and Pam Tillis, among others. Also on the bill were Rio Con Brio, Chris Guenther of Mossyrock, Dear Crow, Eel Sallad, and The Cowchips, a western swing, bluegrass, and cowboy band that had also played in 2023. After the Friday night show, WAMA’s page singled out the clarinet player with The Cowchips.

The contra dance was new in 2026. It is a folk dance in long lines of couples, with roots in English and Scottish country dance and 17th-century French styles. On Saturday evening, with Ritchey and Lauderdale still to play, the association posted that the dance would start afterward at 9:30. The photographs that went with the post were taken by Brian Mittge, the festival’s MC. In some years the weekend overlaps Antique Fest in downtown Centralia. The 2027 festival is set for August 6 to 8 at the grange.

Guitar lessons in Winlock

The association began with one teacher. Marv Sobolesky, a member of the Winlock Bluegrass Organization, was giving guitar lessons to beginners who had never played with anyone but him, and he brought some of them together to practice. “Some asked, ‘Hey, can I invite my friend to this?’” he told LewisTalk in 2017. “And it just grew from there.”

Jim Bierlein, WAMA’s secretary, explained the rest. As members and fans of the bluegrass organization grew interested in music outside traditional bluegrass, “an organization focused on playing and preserving all acoustic music emerged.” Because many of its supporters lived around Winlock, it was named the Winlock Acoustic Music Association in 2007. In 2014 the members changed Winlock to Washington, to dispel the idea that only locals could join. Bierlein himself had started as one of Sobolesky’s students. “His claim was that he believed anyone could learn to play the guitar,” he said. “And I thought, this is the guy for me.” In 2017 the original group still met as the Slow-Jam at Hope Grange in Winlock. WAMA also held an open jam on third Fridays at Oakview Grange, so the association was playing in the Oakview hall years before the festival came there.

The festival itself grew up at Winolequa Park, just outside Winlock. The Chronicle called the July 2014 edition the 14th annual Winlock Pickers’ Fest. The festival’s archive marks 2020 and 2021 as canceled for COVID-19. When it returned in 2022, the Chronicle counted it as the 20th year and described musicians wearing shirts with the festival’s chicken logo. The 21st annual festival, in August 2023, sold weekend passes for $30. Winlock Youth Baseball cooked the food, and the park had only a few picnic tables near the stage.

Four days before the 2024 festival

Brittany Voie told the story of the move in the Lewis County News. She notes in her byline that she does social-media work for WAMA. According to the WAMA board, on the Tuesday before the 2024 festival, a messenger came to the association president’s home with word that Pickersfest would no longer have exclusive use of Winolequa Park. It would have to share the grounds with a private event in the outdoor shelter, and it could not stop cars at the entrance to collect admission. The organizers moved the festival to Oakview Grange.

Winlock Mayor Brandon Svenson gave the city’s account. He wrote that no festival representative had contacted the city during the past year to secure the venue or file the required paperwork. He also wrote that someone had booked and paid for the covered kitchen area for a Saturday family reunion almost a year earlier. Sobolesky answered that the association had relied on “a standing verbal agreement for many years.” He said WAMA spent about $6,000 on bands and advertising and split its camping money with the park. “It’s been a great 24 years and we’re proud of what we accomplished and the joy we brought to a lot of people,” he wrote. One commenter said a youth organization had lost what had been its largest fundraiser of the year, the festival concessions. In 2025 the 23rd annual festival was held at the grange again, with Kenny and Amanda Smith at the top of the bill.

The fern pickers’ ball

Farmers of Waunch Prairie and Hanaford Valley formed Oakview Grange in 1909. Alice Coakley, a 53-year member whose father belonged for 70 years, kept its history. The hall has served as a polling place and as a Red Cross shelter during floods, and in 1942 it was made available as an air-raid shelter. For decades the Prairie Steppers, a square-dance group, have used the hall, and at one point they offered to clean, paint, and refinish its hardwood floor. For the 2008 centennial, the grange commissioned a stone memorial from Tenino stonecutter Keith Phillips. The AA group that meets in the hall painted the building over one weekend. “We would still be out there with paintbrushes if it had been up to us,” Coakley said.

Dances are older in the hall than the contra lines of 2026. “The fern pickers and salal gatherers would have a fall ball here in the grange hall,” Coakley told LewisTalk. “And when the kerosene lamps went out you went home.”