“In the clearing stands a boxer / And a fighter by his trade / And he carries the reminders / Of every glove that laid him down / Or cut him till he cried out / In his anger and his shame / ‘I am leaving, I am leaving’ / But the fighter still remains.”
It’s 11 a.m. on Sunday, April 12, and the Iron Horse smells like fresh coffee. Where the room is typically sealed in darkness for evening concerts, light floods in from the windowed exit. Audience members keep their gaze fixed on the projected lyrics, except for when they turn to their friends and kids and grandkids, beaming as they sing.
Inside, over 200 voices resonate to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer,” filling the Iron Horse with harmonious melodies. Instead of attending a mainstream Sunday worship, this crowd gathered at this sold-out concert hall for a different kind of service: the Happy Valley Bluegrass Church.
The crowd sways in their chairs, lilting the song’s “lie-la-lie” refrain. Then comes the crashing cymbal in an improvised a cappella style. A smile of pride passes through the room after each synchronized “chhhh.”
Riley Greenberg
Onstage sits Jim Henry. A white-bearded man wearing glasses and a forest green button-up, he strums his acoustic guitar with a relaxed precision. He’s modest – at times he seems to be observing the audience more than performing for them – but along with his band the Deep River Ramblers, Henry is the founder and organizer of this bluegrass church.
Born in Chicago, Henry primarily grew up in Roanoke, Virginia. He started playing guitar at age 13 for the same reason younger siblings do anything – to copy his older brother. On the radio, he heard the intricate storytelling of Paul Simon and Neil Young and wanted to learn songs like theirs. Because that folk-rock sound was largely based in the acoustic guitar, “it was relatively easy to emulate what we were hearing,” Henry said.
A week before the bluegrass church in April, I met Henry in his Shutesbury home to talk about what led him to create the bluegrass church. On the walls hang various guitars, both acoustic and electric.
Throughout his twenties, Henry added more stringed instruments to his repertoire, beginning with bass and progressing to include mandolin, dobro, baritone guitar and lap steel.
Henry attended Hampshire College to study social psychology. After college, Henry started playing guitar for The Sundogs, a local band led by fiddler Craig Eastman. They had a “fiery but brief run,” playing a mix of danceable Western swing and rock, even performing three consecutive years at the Newport Folk Festival.
After releasing his first solo album “Into the Blue” in 1993, Henry exclusively did solo work for a few years before realizing it was not for him.
“It’s daunting. And it’s not as much fun,” Henry said. “I traveled all over the country by myself, and that’s kind of a drag after a while.”
Henry has long used his musical expertise to support other musicians, working with Alison Krauss, Shawn Colvin, Paula Cole, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Los Lobos and Tracy Grammer. Most notably, he spent three years supporting five-time Grammy winner Mary Chapin Carpenter on world tours for her album “The Age of Miracles”.
“[Henry’s] little motto is, ‘I like to put the sparkle on the star,’” Grammer said.
Grammer and Henry began working together in 2003 after Grammer’s longtime musical partner, Dave Carter, died suddenly of a heart attack. Carter and Grammer had a major New England tour planned, and Grammer asked her fellow troubadours who could take Carter’s place.
“Everybody said, ‘Get Jim Henry,’” Grammer said.
Henry and Grammer have toured, recorded and played together ever since. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, they started a free monthly livestream performance in hopes of connecting with fans across the world amid collective anxiety. The streams were much more successful than they imagined, with the first concert garnering $6,500 in donations.
“It just didn’t seem right to charge for that,” Henry said.
Six years later, the pair are now on their 74th monthly performance. As the musicians play a themed selection of songs live from Rubytone Studio in Henry’s basement, a regular group of viewers bond in the live chat over haircuts and cataract surgeries.
Like many creatives, Henry funds his work through a variety of income streams. In the same space where he sits in front of a camera to conduct livestreams, he also teaches lessons, plays with many different bands, records for artists and produces records.
“I wear all the hats now,” Henry said. “That’s the only way I can make a living, is to kind of take from different places.”
The Deep River Ramblers, consisting of Henry and fellow sidemen Chris Brashear and Paul Kochanski, is one of such bands. They came together in 2019 when Signature Sounds, a Western Massachusetts-based record label and live music collective, enlisted the band for a Doc Watson tribute night at their annual Back Porch Festival.
Around the same time, Henry’s friend Jamie Elkin attended Hot Rize founder Nick Forster’s Hippy Bluegrass Church on a trip to Boulder, Colorado.
“It was this wonderful experience,” Elkin said.
When Elkin returned to Massachusetts, he called Henry and suggested they start their own iteration in the Pioneer Valley. While the project did not immediately come to fruition, Henry revisited the concept in 2025 and said he was ready.
When Henry reached out to the Parlor Room Collective in search of a venue, he assumed they would suggest The Parlor Room, an intimate venue with an 80-person capacity. To Henry’s surprise, they quickly booked three dates at the Iron Horse instead, which, according to Elkin, “gave the bluegrass church a lot of legitimacy.”
Riley Greenberg
Each service also spotlights a local poet and a community organization, which Elkin organizes.
“My input on this was the spark, and then the poets and the speakers,” Elkin said. “That’s it, Jim’s been doing the rest.”
Though having an audience sing back to you is not particularly novel in Henry’s line of work, the Happy Valley Bluegrass Church is a different experience for a performer.
“When you get 200 people singing, it’s like, that’s [the only thing] happening,” Henry said.
And when 200 people sway side to side in tandem as they croon Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” it’s almost impossible not to get emotional.
“The sweetness of it kind of overtook me there,” Grammer said, admitting she teared up during her guest performance on April 12, when she filled in for Brashear.
Music has always been a powerful rallying force for communities and movements, including during the civil rights movement, where African American spirituals, gospel and folk songs served as motivational anthems.
Similarly, the bluegrass genre united working-class communities in 20th-century Appalachia. During that time, American folk music rose to prominence in the 1960s as singer-songwriters used their lyrics as social commentary.
At the bluegrass church, Henry and his fellow musicians spoke to the power of community within music and the act of singing together.
“Singing together is breathing together,” Grammer said after the event. “In order for everyone to say all those words at the same time, they have to be aligned physically… and often emotionally.”
The band chose a diverse setlist that included a few political songs , The band adjusted the lyrics to the Civil Rights-era freedom song “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round” to call out injustice, fascists and liars.
Kochanski addressed the audience, saying, “The great experiment that started 250 years ago is being threatened every day.” “What can we do?” he asked, before answering his own question: “Sing!”
Grammer acknowledged the intense political climate and its effects on individuals as well as communities.
“It’s a touchy time and people’s nerves are frazzled. Singing, in so many ways, is a balm for the soul,” Grammer said.
Henry agreed, saying “Right at its root, it’s just people getting together and singing. In a lot of ways, that’s a spiritual experience, even though there’s not necessarily a God involved.”
Among the other tracks played were gospel songs, nostalgic tunes like “You Are My Sunshine” and contemporary tracks by Tim McGraw, Tom Waits and U2.
With three sold-out dates behind him, Henry found the community’s reception of the bluegrass church incredibly supportive.
“Singing with people is surprisingly intimate,” Henry said. “And that doesn’t happen a lot these days, at least not in person. So, I think it means a lot to people.”
Riley Greenberg can be reached at [email protected].
