The Vicar’s Pickers Add Unique Sound to Worship at St. Francis of Assisi, Ooltewah

by Emily McDonald
Once a month at St. Francis of Assisi in Ooltewah, the music for the 10 a.m. Sunday worship service is picked and plucked as well as played.

That's because an ensemble known as the Vicar's Pickers plays for the service and uses several different stringed instruments to make the sounds that lend a unique touch to worship.

The Pickers play the liturgical music chosen for the Sunday by the Rev. Buckley Robbins, vicar, and Bill Barger, organist. The optional music is selected by Charles Nix, who plays in the Pickers along with his wife Linda.

"It is hard to make the music fit with the instruments we play, but Chuck comes up with things everybody just loves," said David Fitzgerald, a guitarist in the ensemble.

"We do our best to make the music user-friendly," Mr. Barger said. "That means a great deal."

The Pickers evolved from a conversation Mr. Fitzgerald and several others had at a church pot luck supper in the early 1990s. "It was happenstance," he said. "A couple of us had previously played guitar and said wouldn't it be nice if we could do something at the church."

The Pickers were officially organized in 1993 and for a time were the only music the church had. It started with a couple of guitars, an upright bass and a saxophone, but the sax player later dropped out. Today, the instrumentation includes a Celtic harp, three guitars, a bowed psaltery, a zither, an autoharp and an upright bass.

The name, Vicar's Pickers, came from Wayne Evans, an original member of the ensemble.

Membership has been rather fluid but always includes a few singers. All members have previous experience in music to varying degrees, but no previous experience playing liturgical music.

"The sound has changed over the years but is has been consistently good," the Rev. Mr. Robbins said. "Sometimes they sound like a medieval ensemble, other times like a bluegrass group and other times like the Vicar's Pickers," he added.

The Pickers generally perform the third Sunday of the month and the Tuesday after that service begin rehearsal for the next month. "We put a plan together for the rest of the practices until we play again," Mr. Fitzgerald said.

Mrs. Nix said that one important aspect of the Pickers is "how much all of us as individuals get out of rehearsals. It's a real communal effort to pull it off."

The Pickers were what attracted her to St. Francis in the first place and the ensemble played for the Nix wedding.

"It really is a blessing we are able to do this and give our talents," Mr. Fitzgerald said. "Often people don't have the opportunity to use their talents to glorify him (God)."

"We are thrilled to have such a group," Mr. Robbins said. "It gives variety to the kind of musical offerings we hear in the church.

"What it says is you can be worshipful with a variety of music and that's one of their contributions," he said.
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Emily McDonald is the South East Correspondent for The East Tennessee Episcopalian.