Fourth Friday Old time jam

Bring your acoustic instrument and join in every fourth friday, or just enjoy the background energy. No cover. Ben Townsend facilitates the event.

CLATTER

Clatter offers a full coffee bar, as well as beer and wine. An evening food menu is available and those Fridays are usually also burger night.

OLD-TIME

Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music. It developed along with various North American folk dances. It is played on acoustic instruments, generally centering on a combination of fiddle (see old time fiddling) and plucked string instruments.

BEN TOWNSEND

Born and raised in Romney, West Virginia, multi instrumentalist Ben Townsend loves to play, share, and pass on the traditional music that means so much to him.

With banjo mentors such as Riley Baugus and Ron Mullennex, and Fiddle mentors the likes Dave Bing and Earl White, Townsend has studied a vast variety of old-time traditions ranging from the archaic, haunting fiddle of his home to the Round Peak music of North Carolina and Virginia to the Bluegrass of East Kentucky and Ohio.

As a member of The Fox Hunt, Old Sledge, The Iron Leg Boys, The Hackensaw Boys, and now as a solo performer, Ben has traveled across the country and around the world spreading his unique take on West Virginia regional old-time music. He has shared the stage with acts varying from Ralph Stanley to the Henry Girls of County Donegal, Ireland to the Taiko drummers of Yamagata Prefecture, Japan.

Ben is also a devoted teacher of the music of his region and works both privately and as a featured teacher at music festivals and camps. He has been involved in the Augusta Heritage Festival in Elkins, West Virginia as a staff musician and teacher and has also worked as an instructor at The Allegheny Echoes Festival in Marlinton, West Virginia, Common Ground on the Hill at McDaniel College in Maryland and The Upper Potomac Fiddle Festival in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia just to name a few.