Bring your instruments the 3rd Sunday of each September for the biggest and best Americana fiddle, music festival, and open jam session in Berks County!
The Lyons Fiddle Festival is held in a little park built by the Lyons Borough in 1976 using federal bicentennial funds. It began when Arlan Schwoyer noticed it wasn’t being used much. He wanted the little park to be a great place everyone would enjoy so he started a music festival to compliment the borough’s annual fall car show.
The Lyons Fiddle Festival brought the small town of Lyons into the hearts of people far and wide. Sunday, June 5, 1983, marked the first annual festival with a budget of $300, a borrowed hay wagon, homemade food, and some of the finest fiddling.
Schwoyer was quoted as saying, “We want people to say that Kutztown is three miles north of Lyons. That’s where they’ve got the park and the fiddle festival.”
300 people came out for the music, the fellowship, and the food and the numbers have grown each year since. Folks of all ages were inspired to dust off their old fiddles and play again. From preschoolers to retirees, novice to professional, fiddlers from up and down the east coast have entertained and competed on stage at the festival.
At the rear of the park, under cool shade trees, a bow dances across the strings of a fiddle. Age or experience didn’t matter. People gathered around the fiddler and jammed on their fiddles, mandolins, guitars, washtubs and strings. There were even those who brought boards and jigged in rhythm. Kindred spirits were discovered at the Lyons Fiddle Festival.
A new era for the Lyons Fiddle Festival
It was July 2006, when Schwoyer and his wife, Donna, decided they could no longer continue to produce the festival. Determined to keep the music alive, people still came that year and jammed under those shade trees.
In an article written by Darree Robin Sicher, the late Suzie Reed, borough councilperson, said, “We got so complacent; we didn’t realize what we had.”
Reed got to work and with the help of Keith Brintzenhoff, Keith Weidner, Steve Haring, the Lyons Fire Company and many volunteers both old and new, the festival was reborn September 2007.
In its 31 years, it is estimated that over 149,000 spectators have set up their folding chairs and blankets in the park for entertainment by over 770 contestants and an untold number of jammers. Contestants have even continued on with successful careers in music.
