Bluegrass finds a home in Marietta

“You had a lot of wives dropping their husbands off so they could go shopping,” Greg Beyer, a transplant from Michigan, said with a smile. “When it closed [the store is still in business in north Cobb], I went home and told my wife we were losing our place. She said she thought she knew a restaurant where we might be welcome.”

Beyer’s wife, Wendy, was referring to the Australian Bakery, where she is a partner with Mark Allen and Neville Steel. The three, born and raised Down Under, were happy to give the group a new venue.

“It began with three or four people and just kept growing from there,” Wendy Beyer said. “We have a core group of regulars but a lot of people from quite a long way come in from time to time to play.”

Indeed, from the callow to “power pickers,” the bakery is home to a genre of music that has its roots in music brought to America by immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England and Africa.

“There’s an old-time feel to bluegrass music,” said Neil Turner, founder of Buzzard Mountain Instruments, where he builds and restores banjos. “A sense of where this country came from.”

And there is also a democratic aspect to bluegrass, especially on Tuesdays. A group will form a circle with its instruments and toss around song ideas until someone begins to play. That person will front for a verse then nod to someone else to take the lead.

“I think what a lot of people like about bluegrass music is that participatory style,” Robin Daniel said. “It’s not all about just one person out front the whole time.”

In spite of those European roots, bluegrass is regarded as an exemplar of Americana. But that didn’t deter Jean Abernethy. She was born in a town north of Toronto into a farming family, where mom and dad were also musicians.

“They played country and bluegrass,” she said. “And everybody in the family played at least one musical instrument. I’ve been playing [bluegrass] my entire life.”

Abernethy can play guitar and banjo, but seems most comfortable with the mandolin she has had since 1970. After jamming on several up-tempo tunes inside the restaurant, she wanders outside and joins two young fiddlers on the sidewalk to play the melancholy “Ashokan Farewell.” The composition was used as the title theme in the Ken Burns documentary “The Civil War.”

It is that broad scope of the music that attracts several regulars. Barry Levine played guitar growing up, concentrating on rock ’n’ roll. The self-employed jewelry designer was jogging through his Garden Hills neighborhood years ago when the sounds from a clubhouse caught his attention.

“I did not like bluegrass,” he said. “But I heard this song called ‘Blackberry Blossom’ and I was hooked. What I’ve learned since then is that bluegrass is a very forgiving medium. Anyone can play it at least well enough to enjoy themselves.”

To no one’s surprise, the music also draws a crowd. Some are there weekly, others find it as they stroll in the area.

“What we have seen is that people come one week, then they tell their friends and the next week those people come to see what it’s all about,” Wendy Beyer said. “A lot of people who might never come to the square have done so because they came here. When the weather is good, the sidewalk [outside the bakery] is packed.”

While the group is accommodating when it comes to musical skill, do not try to pull it into a different genre. Regulars recall the night a player suggested some AC/DC and had his suggestion “politely declined,” as Tuesday regular Bob Pearl said. However, the heavy-metal rock band was launched in Australia by two brothers from Scotland.

Still, it is hard to imagine hearing banjos strumming to “Rock ’n’ Roll Damnation.” Especially when it can be so much more relaxing to sip sweet tea, have a Hedgehog Slice (akin to a brownie) and listen to the woebegone tale of “Muhlenberg County.”