Blue Water Ramblers bring music to KWF

 
By AMY MAHAFFY

With more than a hundred years combined experience picking and strumming, the Blue Water Ramblers will perform at this year’s Kirtland Warbler’s Festival.

“It’s our first time here and we are honored and pleased to be invited,” said Richard “Bear” Berends about coming to the festival, “Where else would we want to be?”

The Ramblers sound is traditional folk music that the quartet harmonizes on.

Bernends and Banjo-Jim Foerch have been playing for 30 years together and were later joined by Dave Bunce and Dan Lynn, who completed the quartet. Berends plays both the six- and 12-string guitar, while Foerch plays the banjo. Bunce adds the folk sound with the mandolin, and Lynn keeps the beat with his stand up bass.

They sing the songs of Michigan and the Midwest, ranging from empty beer cans and mosquitoes to the Great Lake fisheries. They like to use humor in their music but also can be serious.

They break the songs up into sets during their performance and put all of the nature songs together, all the Michigan songs together and then within the sets, they do medleys and that is where their enthusiasm shows through. They all like the same kind of music and they all get along well and enjoy playing the music.

Another thing that binds them together is that they are all teachers and that allows them to tour and do shows during the summer. What they enjoy most about performing is the interaction of people with the music and the music with the people.

They can tell you many stories about performances they have given and people they touched with their music.

At a concert in the park in Auburn Hills, they inspired a woman who had suffered a stroke and had lost many of her motor skills. After the show, she came up crying, asking her son to lift her up so she could give them a hug and tell them that they touched her.
After their show, she began using a guitar as therapy and has kept in touch with them.

This summer they will be touring around the area. The last Wednesday of July they will be doing a concert in the park in West Branch and the first Saturday in August they will be in Grayling for the Jack Pine Jamboree.

They have recently taped a set of their Great Lakes songs for CMU public television because of a performance during a dinner cruise for a fundraiser they did the previous years.

“We are using the power of music to meet people and build relationships,” Berends said, “It enriches our lives as well as others. We just enjoy it.”