Players gather in the Santa Cruz Mountains to make music from saws

As starlight punctuates the night sky on a Saturday, players gather in a small circle around a half dozen flickering tea lights. The mood is relaxed and cheerful.

Most old-timers, like Cowin, feel optimistic that the saw’s popularity will continue, even though one of the instrument’s greatest advocates, Charlie Blacklock, the founder of the Musical Saw Association, passed away this year. They cite the success of virtuosos such as David Weiss, whose playing is featured in the soundtracks of the 2000 film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and, more recently, in “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.” Mr. Weiss, who spent three decades as principal oboist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, plays a Stanley “handyman.”

Many new players, like Mariah Stricker, say the saw makes them feel like musicians for the first time in their lives. Ms. Stricker, who works in the plant-science department of the University of California, Davis, hadn’t played an instrument since middle school. Now she practices between two and five hours a day.

“The thing is, when the electricity finally goes out once and for all, saw is what everybody is going to be listening to,” quips Thomas Spearance, a sawyer from Fort Bragg, Calif.

Cowin has been flown to Japan and China to play the saw. Originally trained as a classical guitarist, he heard his first saw music while walking the streets of Copenhagen in 1968. Three years later, he bought his first kit (saw, violin bow, lessons, and case) for $39. He liked the saw’s simplicity and durability. What other instrument, he muses, can be used to stir a fire?

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On Sunday morning, after a late night of jamming, the sawyers rub sleep from their eyes, and traipse over a covered bridge onto the grounds of Roaring Camp Railroads. The camp is an assortment of old wood buildings, picnic tables, and steam trains designed to take visitors back to the 1880s. A group of mountain men is rendezvousing there for the weekend.

Blacklock’s relatives, who now run the Charlie Blacklock Musical Saws company, have set up a table to sell custom-made saws in lengths from 26 to 36 inches. Blacklock’s grandson, Kenny, wears an orange festival T-shirt advertising “Cutting Edge Music.”

Although Cowin estimates tens of thousands of people play the saw worldwide, this year’s festival has drawn only two dozen or so. Late Sunday morning, audience members are treated to a “Saw Off” among six up-and-coming sawyers, a couple of whom suffer minor stage fright before performing. A young woman in flip-flops plays a multi-part rendition of “Hot Stuff.” A man with a red-and-white beard and feathered cap performs “Beautiful Brown Eyes.”

In the afternoon, Thomas Spearance climbs on stage and holds up his saw. The man who crafted this instrument, he tells the audience, has changed his life forever.

“This is Charlie’s festival,” Mr. Spearance says. “And Charlie is always going to be here.”

As he begins his haunting version of “Amazing Grace,” a gentle breeze lifts the unlikely music into the sky. Once he finishes, perhaps wishing to drive home the point, he stands up and balances his saw on his nose.

He gazes heavenward and shouts: “Make some music, children!”

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