Barbara Lawlor, Nederland.  Some musicians are destined for church music at some point in their careers. No matter what winding roads they travel to perform, they somehow wind up giving of their talent in front of a congregation.

Bluegrass fiddler, traveling performer and now developer of her own method of teaching music, Annie Savage, chuckles as she speaks of her new job as worship director at the Nederland Community Presbyterian Church. She is already ensconced in the Ned music scene and taking on the responsibilities of a church choir and teaching children to perform brings her to her favorite town once a week.

With three children, one of them seven months old, she couldn’t take on a full-time job in Nederland, but working with the church every week is doable and brings her close to the town and musicians she has grown to love, and she gets to spend Sundays in the mountains.

Annie grew up in southeast Iowa, close to Missouri and was playing the fiddle by the time she was two. Back in the day, the Suzuki method of teaching kids how to play instruments was the rage and she wanted to play bluegrass. At the age of five, she played the piano.

“My folks wanted me to be cultured and music was something that would edify my life, but I always knew I would be a musician as a career.”

But she wasn’t alone in her quest. When she was 12, she was blessed with a mentor, Doc, a Johnny Cash type person, whose kids had grown up, and he saw in Annie a talent to be developed. She had played in a fiddle contest and he was one of the judges. After the contest he asked her if she would play in his band.

“I was in middle school and playing three to four gigs a week. This is where my platform for teaching performance to kids was born. Performance is always a real part of being a musician.”

When Annie was a sophomore in college, studying music at Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, Doc passed away. She began to foray into classical music and for five years, she studied music. She didn’t play music, she learned theory and began to question if the college experience wasn’t just a distraction from what she wanted to do. She realized that just because she was studying music in college, that did not mean that what she was learning was going to actually help her make a career as a musician.

She says that now colleges are beginning to make changes in the music curriculum, beginning to teach useful skills for musicians to earn a living using their talent.

“I took piano lessons and at one point the teacher said that it was too bad that I didn’t practice more, that I would never become a professional, but at least I could play in a church. That was the deciding moment for me. I couldn’t stand the piano. I realized that classical music was a tool, a valid upper level pursuit, a guided version of what to do in real life.”

Annie plays bluegrass and country music. She sang in musical theater, which is a great way for kids to learn how to perform, how to engage an audience. She moved on to become a road manager for other musicians and she played the harp at the Ritz Carlton.  She attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

At one point she decided that being a performing musician was self-centered, that she was becoming more of a teacher in her approach to music and she wanted to pass on what she knew. She was hired to teach public school orchestra which led to her developing her own method of teaching skills and the Savage Fiddler Method was introduced.

“I would go into tone schools and teach kids how to jam, to do solos, skills I didn’t get as a child, but that I needed as a musician. When you perform you don’t sit there with sheet music. They didn’t teach how to play by ear, to improvise.”

Annie left the public school system and came to CU in Boulder to become an associate professor in Music Education. It was a good way to get to Colorado and become part of the Jamgrass scene that was growing in the mountains, in the music scene of Nederland.

On tour, Annie had met Vince Herman. She was in a band called the Mayflies who came to play at the Stage Stop in Rollinsville. The jamgrass music drew her and other musicians to Colorado, go Nederland which she says was the heart and soul of the movement.

She was driven by the idea that she wanted to mentor mountain kids, to participate in the music of the community. Annie felt herself transitioning from the partying, from the rocking out, to wanting to make an impact for the kids in the community, to teach them the importance of the history of Nederland music.

In 2010 Annie lived in Nederland and taught kids how to play the fiddle through Brightwood Music, with Doug Armitage encouraging her. She began a bluegrass camp the first week of summer vacation, with Jeff Scroggins and a couple of his band members joining the string players who sat in a circle and played with each other. Their performing skills and confidence grew at every session.

The Pickin’ in the Peaks summer camp led to the onstage performance of the Young Pickers who have a slot in the annual NedFest on Sunday afternoon. The kids get to stand up and play before thousands of people. The music camp sells out every year, it is up to 50 performers jamming together and loving it. This year’s camp is from June 6 to June 9 at SavageFiddler.com.

Annie is also the president of the the Colorado Bluegrass Music Society, a group that connects the dots between bluegrass, teachers and the public school system. When she first saw the posting of the Nederland Middle Senior High School orchestra leader job, it was like a divine intervention, a job she always wanted. However, having just given birth to her third child, it was not an option at this time.

“When I saw the job listing for the Presbyterian Chuch, I thought, ‘This is me.’ “Last Sunday, Easter Sunday, after a few weeks of working with the choir, the kid’s praise band, and Daniel, NCPC’s talented piano player, she took over her niche in the community.

On Sunday, after church Annie teaches at Brightwood Music. The pieces of her musical puzzle are all fitting together and she looks forward to bluegrass jamming in the mountains and thanking God through song for her Nederland opportunity.