Old Time Fiddling and Progressive String Bands in Portage County
- Art Stevenson
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
As part of our PCHS feature exhibit, each month through December of 2026 we will share a new piece of music history. Be sure to come back to learn more about the music that makes Portage County so great!
Old Time Fiddling and Progressive String Bands in Portage County was researched and written by Art Stevenson.
Old Time Fiddling in Portage County – 1860s to the 1910s
“In the Pioneer Days our forefathers created their own amusements. Distance meant nothing to them and a journey of 40 miles to join in some frolic was part of their young lives…there was a close community spirit between the hamlets on the river and the people visited back and forth attending parties and dances, and they thought nothing of hitching up Old Dobbin and starting north for Wausau or south to The Rapids to attend some social gathering.”
So wrote Pat Collins in the Stevens Point Journal in March of 1929, recalling popular country fiddlers before the days of radio, the phonograph, and automobiles. When young people would travel on foot, or by horse and buggy, to dances and social gatherings. Imagine traveling dirt paths and wagon roads from Stevens Point to Plover, or Wisconsin Rapids, for a dance at a wood frame pavilion or hall with plank floors, and the “orchestra” might be only a fiddle and piano. Just two or three musicians, entertaining a hundred or more dancers. The fiddler would expertly call the dances as he played – quadrilles, waltzes, hoedowns, two steps, and reels. He might jump down onto the dance floor with the dancers, as the spirit ran high. The dance would continue through the night, with breaks to eat and drink, until 3 or 4 in the morning! In rural communities, old time fiddlers and country dances were a big attraction in the 1800s.
The fiddlers were fascinating people. Lewis (Lew or Lou) Johnson, a Black fiddler from Virginia, arrived in Portage County after the Civil War and became Portage County’s first Black resident. Lew left Virginia after the war at age 16, traveling with a local soldier to Portage County. He worked on local farms and livery stables, and played fiddle for old time dances, calling the dances as he played his fiddle. Newspaper notices mention the Lew Johnson Orchestra appearing at the Rink Opera House, Isherwood Hall, and other dance halls in and around Stevens Point in the 1890s. Lew Johnson married a white woman, Maggie Gillespie, and they had two children before Lew passed away at age 48 in 1899. Old timers remembered Lew as an exciting fiddler who could play Virginia Reel hoedowns, Irish jigs, and square dance numbers. His obituary in the Stevens Point Journal said, “he was in demand at all the old-fashioned hoedowns,” and told of a large gathering of friends at Lew Johnson’s funeral at McDill.
Perhaps the busiest and longest-active old-time fiddler in Portage County’s early days was John Een (1847 – 1921), who moved with his family from Sweden to a farm on Lime Lake, near Amherst, in 1852. John “got the fiddle fever” and built his own first fiddle at age 13. He played his first dance in 1862 and kept a record of all his engagements. 54 years later in 1916 he played his last date, after fiddling for 4,668 dances, weddings, parties, and other events! He traveled around Wisconsin and Minnesota by train, horseback, on foot, and by ox-drawn sled to play his fiddle. Besides keeping his busy music schedule, John Een farmed, served as an assessor, and as a postmaster in Amherst and Amherst Junction.
Over 100 years since John Een passed away, string bands still get us dancing! Check out the modern bands listed below.
The Progressive String Bands of Central Wisconsin
In the 1990s, a new style began to emerge, with acoustic string bands performing a variety of styles, including Bluegrass music, in their shows. In any musical genre, there will be progressions and changes in the approach to the music as new generations of talented musicians emerge on the scene. The younger musicians will naturally have newer or different musical influences than the older generation, and the music they play will be different, creating a new approach to the string band style. The emergence of these progressive string bands has been explosive, with numerous bands organizing across Wisconsin and neighboring states in a few short years. A number of these bands have achieved national prominence and are, or were, based in the Stevens Point area.
Sloppy Joe (1999 – present) is a string band active since 1999 in central Wisconsin. They play a combination of original music, folk, fiddle tunes, bluegrass, and country music. Members are Stef Lee (Galloway, WI), upright bass, guitar, musical saw, fiddle, vocals, songwriter; Gavin Schaberg (New Hope, WI), banjo, guitar, vocals, songwriter; Jeff Sachs (Custer, WI), guitar, fiddle, bass, vocals, songwriter; and Bobby Burns (Waupaca, WI), mandolin, fiddle, guitar, vocals. Original member Jimer Soukup still appears on upright bass and washtub. James Saegert (Stevens Point, WI) frequently appears on washboard. Dale Reichert (banjo) appears with Sloppy Joe occasionally. The Sloppy Joe band has long been a local favorite, appearing at numerous venues over the years in Stevens Point and around Wisconsin. They refer to their music as “genuine, authentic, home-grown Slopgrass!” In 1999 Sloppy Joe won the Minnesota Battle of the Jug Bands contest.
Sloppy Joe has released three CDs of their music. Jeff Sachs has operated a home recording studio for many years, most recently in a building next to his home near Custer. Jeff has produced records for Sloppy Joe and other local groups. Art Stevenson helped mix two of Sloppy Joe’s recording projects.
For over 25 years, Sloppy Joe has been the host band of the annual Jackpine Jamboree music festival near Birnamwood, WI. The festival features bluegrass, country rock, string bands, Americana, and world music groups from around the country. Sloppy Joe has performed annually for many years at music festivals held at the Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park near Live Oak, Florida. Sloppy Joe has been a featured act at Bluegrass In The Pines, Rosholt, WI, for many years.
In 2006, when Art Stevenson & High Water retired from hosting the weekly Bluegrass Wednesdays at the Northland Ballroom, Sloppy Joe became the Wednesday night hosts. In 2025, Jeff Sachs, Bobby Burns, and various members of Sloppy Joe and Art Stevenson & High Water continue to host Bluegrass Wednesdays at the Northland Ballroom, now called Bart’s Pizza Pub.
Horseshoes and Hand Grenades (2010 - present) is made up of Adam Greuel on vocals and guitar, Russell Pedersen on vocals and banjo, David C. Lynch on vocals, harmonica, and accordion, Colin Mettelka on vocals, fiddle, and mandolin, and Sam Odin on vocals and upright bass. The members of Horseshoes & Hand Grenades were all students at UW-Stevens Point when they met in 2010. They started playing music together, working hard and long on their repertoire. With encouragement from friends and the community they performed in local bars and at campus events. As a student at UWSP, Adam Greuel worked as a student activities and events programmer, facilitating live music shows on campus, and naturally HHG were involved. With the band’s energetic live shows, and Adam Greuel’s charismatic on- and off-stage personality, the band quickly gained a large regional following. Adam observes: “There was a distinct scene forming around bluegrass at that moment of time, and a lot of it came from the stirring energy that was happening with the college kids. A ‘social center’ kind of formed around the music…it was where folks were going to meet one another.”
HHG’s live shows are exciting combinations of original music, traditional songs, and well-chosen covers, bringing the audience to their feet dancing and gathering around the stage to watch the band perform. In an era of plugged-in electric string band music, you’ll often see Horseshoes and Hand Grenades performing acoustically around one microphone. They have released seven albums to date and have appeared at major music festivals and large venues across the USA as far away as Alaska. All five band members sing and write songs for the band’s shows and recordings.
Dig Deep (2015 - present) is self-described as a hard driving string band. That is an understatement. Dig Deep plays original songs, bluegrass, old timey, and classic country with a face-melting, paint peeling intensity. Alex Dalnodar’s head-bobbing, gritty singing through clenched teeth, pounding out the rhythm on his well-worn guitar; Aaron Von Baron’s ground-shaking slapped bass, Bob Weigandt’s fingers dancing on his mandolin fretboard, and hair-tossing, long-necked banjo-claw-hammering Oscar Noetzel blazing through chorus after chorus…all of that combined is too much for the audience to take sitting down, and they jump to their feet, dancing and crowding the stage as Dig Deep pounds it out, finishing the set by carrying their instruments into the middle of the audience for the final song. That’s a typical Dig Deep show.
At one point, Alex, Bob, Oscar, and bassist Pete Pagel all played together in the Ditch Runners, a Park Falls-based punk/outlaw country/bluegrass band, and all four eventually left the band to form Dig Deep in Stevens Point in February 2015.
The Dig Deep band released their first album in 2015, with all-original material written by guitarist and singer Alex Dalnodar, of Stevens Point. Four more record projects have been released since then, including two in 2024. Aaron Von Baron joined Dig Deep in 2021.
Dig Deep has taken their music from Stevens Point to venues and festivals across the country: the Great Plains states, Colorado, Northwestern and Northeastern states, Texas and Arkansas. Audiences around the USA respond enthusiastically to Dig Deep’s energetic, rocking approach to classic country, old time, and bluegrass music. Dig Deep has shared the stage with some of the biggest stars in bluegrass and Americana music – The Traveling McCourys, Old Crow Medicine Show, Sam Bush, etc. Their 2024 album Live In Denver was recorded during a recent tour of the West.
The Foragers (2019 - present) is an all-star string band with a rotating cast, with some members based in Portage County. Bluegrass, folk, country, and old-time music are the band’s specialties. They have appeared with from three to five musicians in the group. The Foragers were organized by Stef Lee of Galloway, Wisconsin, and several Portage County musicians have been involved with the group: Dale Reichert, Jeff Sachs, Oscar Noetzel, Adam Greuel, and Art Stevenson.
Other notable progressive strings bands from Portage County include Armchair Boogie, Hemlock Chaser, Red Barn & Missing Miles, and the Dandelion Delivery Service.
Thank you for reading this music history, presented together with the Portage County Historical Society's feature exhibit!
Be sure to visit the exhibit in-person during open hours and check out the digital collection of local music history.