About Ron Camerrer

I am the founder, leader, and coordinator of the Bluegrass Gospel Jam Network. We spread the gospel through participation in Bluegrass Gospel Music.  

Home based out of Fort Collins, Colorado, we help initiate Bluegrass Gospel Jams.

Bluegrass Gospel Jams
Portions of an interview by By Magdalena Wegrzyn 
Longmont Times-Call
For Ron Camerrer, bluegrass gospel is church.
“For some of the musicians and people that come to the jams, it’s a church for them, too, without them knowing it,” said Camerrer at Saturday’s jam at Johnson’s Corner restaurant in Johnstown. “We don’t say a prayer or anything like that upfront. We just start playing and participating.”

Camerrer is the founder of Bluegrass Gospel Jams, an outreach ministry that spreads bluegrass gospel music throughout the Front Range and beyond. Every month since 2004, amateur bluegrass musicians have been meeting to play church hymns. In 2005, the jams moved to the banquet hall at Johnson’s Corner.

“My goal is to attract the musicians that may have never gone to church, that may have never hobnobbed with a bunch of Christians,” Camerrer said.

Camerrer also has helped start jam groups in Franktown, Pierce, Masonville, Sterling, Nunn, Gill, and Calhan. As news of the jams spread online, Camerrer helped groups start in Brooksville, Fla., and Plainville, Mass.

New members have a way of recruiting themselves.

Loveland resident Joe Cox peeked into Saturday’s jam and signed up for Camerrer’s ever-growing e-mail list. Joe, who plays banjo, and his wife, Esther Cox, a bassist, stopped at Johnson’s Corner for lunch, and “just heard the bass thumpin’” he said. The couple said they plan to come back next month — this time with their instruments.

Kentucky native Bill Sears, 72, has played guitar his whole life. “If you’re from Kentucky and you can’t play guitar, there’s something wrong with you,” said Sears, who runs a screen printing business in Longmont. His wife, Jean Sears, is a nurse at Peaks Care Center and encouraged Bill to jam with the group after hearing them play for the nursing home residents earlier this month. “He’s delighted to get to play,” said Jean Sears, who knitted a yellow baby blanket during Saturday’s jam while Bill strummed his guitar.

Denver resident John Gilmore moved to Colorado from Texas in the 1970s, and he said many of the songs remind him of home. He reconnected with bluegrass nine years ago and has since immersed himself in the culture. It’s not necessarily a religious experience, but there is an element of spirituality to bluegrass, he said. “It inspires me,” he said. “It connects me with the universe.”

On Saturday, he tested out his electric guitar at the jam session. Although electric instruments are a no-no in strict bluegrass circles, this jam isn’t that strait-laced, Camerrer said. He holds everyone to just three rules. Musicians must announce the song title before playing, call out the key and, because audience participation is critical, cannot turn their backs to the audience.

Those parameters aside, it’s a free-for-all.

“Being in charge of musicians is like herding cats,” Camerrer said. “And I mean that sincerely, and I talk to them that way because once they get going, they’re just having a good ol’ time.”