Country Club Crossroads Bar In Athol Revives Tradition Of Open Jam Sessions

Say “open country jam” to some folks and they’re liable to ask where the lid is.

But those aren’t the folks who filled the Crossroads Bar in Athol on Sunday.

Buck Mourning lugged his steel guitar. Bill Kasperson brought his fiddle. Jeremiah Morgan brought a mournful voice to sing those country songs that make you cry in your beer.

Bars used to hold country jam sessions all over North Idaho a decade ago, the regulars say, but not anymore.

So Tom Goldhorn, who opened the Crossroads earlier this month, decided to revive the tradition.

“There’s a lot of local talent,” said Goldhorn, who sports a Kenny Rogers beard, leather vest and black cowboy hat. “We want to get the locals involved, get it back to the way it used to be. In your jam sessions, they just get together and have a good time.”

Cowboy-booted toes tap against bar stools. A jukebox belts out Willie Nelson while the musicians set up.

If you’re looking for rock ‘n’ roll, this ain’t the place.

“Play some Meatloaf,” one woman asked Goldhorn as he fed a dollar into the jukebox.

“Meatloaf, what’s Meatloaf?” he said. “Don’t they serve that next door?”

“We want to keep it country,” he said later. “This is the area out here where that’s what they like.”

Morgan, who runs a sawmill by day, has been singing and playing guitar as long as he can remember.

He called the jam session an “open party.”

“Somebody gets up and starts something,” he said. “The woods are just full of musicians.”

If there’s enough interest, Goldhorn hopes to hold an open country jam the first Sunday of every month at the Crossroads.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo