Mountain mud

Real Musi By Robert Feuer Email: roberto777@comcast.net Mountain Mud Hopefully a harbinger of spring, Raymond's Bakery, that quaint oasis under the redwoods, just south of bustling Cazadero, is restarting its weekly live local music series on Feb. 7. Scheduled for Fridays 6 to 9 p.m., billed as Community Pizza Beer and Wine Night, these events have become a very popular element of the River music scene. An outdoor stage will come into play in April, weather permitting, according to owner Mark Weiss. The following week, and every second Friday thereafter, Raymond's will welcome Sonoma County's premier hillbilly band, Dag Nabbit (named after an old-timer's curse.) Jim Fullmer, an adept vocalist and rhythm guitar player, has revamped his band in the past year, by adding his daughter, Beth Bowman, on vocals and percussion, along with Mike Lewis on standup bass, and Jeremiah O'Neil on lead guitar and banjo. Dag Nabbit's acoustic sound, which Fullmer likes to call "mountain mud music," due to its backwoods feeling, is a mixture of several closely-related genres. "As far as I know, I was born singing," Fullmer says in a recent conversation. Music became an integral part of his childhood spent in Southern California, through a fundamentalist background which included a lot of time singing in a "downhome, Ozarky kind of church." The minister sometimes played guitar from the pulpit. Influenced by the 1960s folk revival, Fullmer, at age 14, joined relatives in a band called the Kinfolk Singers, performing at church and family functions wearing matching green velour shirts. "I have a good musical sense, an excellent rhythm, and if anyone can sing a song, I can harmonize with them," he says. Fullmer considers the Dillards, who he first saw playing the Darling Boys on the Andy Griffith Show, as his first hillbilly music influence. The Dillards inclusion of downhome stories and jokes has become an essential part of Dag Nabbit's act. "Showmanship is as important as musicianship. The point of us singing is to make people happy. They want to watch people on stage having a good time," he says. Fullmer married in 1972, and settled in Sonoma County, something he calls "the best thing that ever happened to me," due to the influence of his wife, Nancy, whose ancestors populated this 5 area as far back as 1870. The Fullmers have been in Guerneville since 1976. Growing up in the heyday of Western movies, he values the simple, timeless principles of the cowboy code. Calling himself River Ranger, he spent a few years on a Guerneville radio station, doing the Stumptown Radio Roundup show, originally playing cowboy music, later branching out to hillbilly tunes. When he started Dag Nabbit in 2009, he used his favorites from that show, many of them obscure, as a source of song selection, Dag Nabbit invites you to join them on Valentine's Day, for an evening steeped in what Fullmer describes as "a home music feeling that touches your heart." Suspenders optional. For more info on Raymond's , go to raymonds-bakery.com