31st Prairie Lake Pickin' Party to honor Bell, McCrary

From Thursday through Saturday, June 12 through 14, musicians of the “old-time country, bluegrass and gospel” persuasion will visit Prairie Lake for the 31st-annual Prairie Lake Pickin’ Party, the flagship event of the Kansas Prairie Pickers Association.

It’ll be the event’s first year without two of its founding members — Gary Bell of Holton and Galen McCrary of Tecumseh — but Joleen Thorpe, one of the many musicians who’ll be gracing the Prairie Lake stage next weekend, said Bell and McCrary’s presence will still be felt.

“They really got the whole thing started,” Thorpe said of Bell and McCrary, who died within three days of each other last September. “If it hadn’t been for them, none of this would have gotten started.”

Thorpe said “some sort of memorial” for Bell and McCrary is planned for Saturday, June 14, the closing night of this year’s festival, which begins Thursday, June 12 and features three nights and an afternoon of music.

“Gary has definitely been such an important part of the festival over the years,” Thorpe said of Bell. “It’s going to be very strange to not have him there. He’s always had a band or two, or however many, play, and in his last couple of years, he might not have had his own bands, but he usually got up and sang a song or two with another band.”

Thorpe traced the origin of the Pickin’ Party to a monthly “jam” that Bell and McCrary hosted at the Watson Grange southeast of Topeka, starting in 1992, and finding out about those monthly sessions was what got her started in a life of old-time country and bluegrass music. It was also the start of the Kansas Prairie Pickers Association.

“I played guitar and sang, but I didn’t know anything about going to a jam,” she said. “But I went to it, just to check it out. I feel like that day was kind of the beginning of the whole thing, because everybody there was looking for the same thing I was looking for. I just didn’t realize it at the time.”

Led by Bell and McCrary, KPPA organized the first Pickin’ Party at Prairie Lake in 1994, a small event with musicians playing on the back of a trailer, Thorpe said. That led to a three-night event, and KPPA members pitched in to build a stage on the Prairie Lake grounds.

Thorpe noted that some of the musicians who come to the Pickin’ Party play in more than one group, and she said she’ll be playing in five at this year’s event — Poor Man’s Opera, Boiler Room Boys, Rood Awakening, Pastense and a new group, Mandolin Orchestra, that has a “very interesting” premise.

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