Sarah Jarosz comes home

After singing her song, “Hometown,” four-time Grammy winner Sarah Jarosz told her audience during her concert in the Wimberley Playhouse last week that, “This is emotional. It’s taking all of my power not to burst into tears.” Earlier in the day, Mayor Gina Fulkerson declared November 22, 2023 “Sarah Jarosz Day.”

“Not in my wildest dreams did I think anything like this would happen.”

Her performance was the culmination of the Wimberley Valley Art and Cultural Alliance’s “Stars Over Wimberley” 2023 concert series, spearheaded by WVACA organizer Denise Renter.

Performing alongside her was award-winning musician Jeff Picker, her long-standing beau with whom she recently wed. Both musicians donated their time and talent to help raise money for the Robert Moreman Memorial Scholarship Fund. It was revealed by Cathy Moreman beforehand that the series had raised $31,000, and that seven recipients had been selected.

Upon hearing the news, Jarosz remarked, “That is so special because it signifies community and home.”

Born in Austin, Jarosz was raised in Wimberley, attending local schools where both of her parents taught, and released her first album as a high school senior in 2009. Since launching her career, she has won five Grammy and Americana awards and been nominated for eleven others. She has toured with Garrison Keillor on “The America the Beautiful Tour - A Prairie Home Companion,” toured with Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek, and was a regular performer on “Live from Here,” a National Public Radio production hosted by Chris Thile. Since 2014, she has been a member of the folk trio, “I’m With Her,” along with Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek fame and Aoife O’Donovan. She has toured internationally, and performed with many prominent musicians. After a seven-year tenure in New York, she now resides in Nashville.

The 90-minute concert allowed Jarosz to share her talent and success with the residents of Wimberley who were fortunate to get tickets to the intimate event. It also allowed her to introduce her husband to friends and fans. Appearing every bit the blushing bride, her accord with Picker as a fellow musician was evident.

An accomplished musician in his own right, Picker charmed the crowd with his ability to give his wife all the adoring grief he could dish out. Their back and forth patter appeared relaxed and affectionate, eliciting laughter from the crowd. At one point he interrupted Jarosz to ask, “Wait, aren’t we raising money for Iowa corn farmers tonight?”

The concert also allowed Jarosz to publicly acknowledge her parents Gary and Mary Jarosz, and to thank her musical mentor, Mike Bond, a bluegrass virtuoso who hosted a weekly Friday- night Bluegrass music jam, who was also in the audience with his wife, Louie Bond, a former writer with the Wimberley View. He was an important influence in her musical life who welcomed the then ten-year-old “with open arms.”

Both multi-instrumentalists with credits in the Bluegrass, Americana, and Jazz genres, the duo played an acoustic set of songs from five of Jarosz’s seven studio albums including new songs from “Polaroid Lovers,” due to be released in January.

In a touching tribute to her mother, Jarosz played a portion of her “Blue Heron Suite” written during her mother’s illness with cancer. “I took her fragile hand and wondered if it would be the last time. . . we saw a shimmer in her eyes and she said everything would be fine,” to which she quipped, “Anyone need a tissue? This is really so special.”

Other songs followed with Picker and Jarosz playing different instruments — guitar, banjo, electric bass, mandolin and octave mandolin. For the Bluegrass standard, “My Rose of Old Kentucky,” written and recorded by Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, she picked up her signature clawhammer banjo and joked, “Do you know why there are no banjos in Star Trek?” “Because it is the future,” she said, poking fun at the instrument’s oldtime origins. Other covers included Bob Dylan’s “Ring Them Bells,” Tom Petty’s “Time to Move On,” and Dan Fogelberg’s “Song from Half Mountain,” which resided, she said, in some part of her DNA. “My father played it to my mom before I was born.”

The concert allowed her fans into the private world of a sensitive songwriter and musician whose fame in the outside world is the stuff of legend. At 32, she remains Wimberley’s sweetheart, not only for her accomplishments, but for her grace to blush over her success in the highest echelons of Bluegrass music and the love shown to her by her fans, friends and family.