Jon Adams: A Folk Life on the Mountain

The chairs never matched, but it was a comfortable room. A wingback angled beside a few dining room chairs, a love seat pushed against the wall – it looked just like someone’s living room when extra guests were visiting. On a cold night in October 2009, Jon Adams took his place, guitar resting on his lap. No microphone. No stage.

Neighbors leaned close, coffee mugs warming their hands. I was there, having brought my mother to see Jon play. The room grew quiet as he started to speak, to tell us something about the song. It was often something funny. Much later, he would say, “You always have to tell a joke before a song.”

Then he would play, weaving melody and rhythm at once, letting the songs carry their own stories. The venue was called McLundy’s Green Room, an intimate gathering place on Brightwood Loop in the late 2000s, part of the long legacy of live music in the Mt. Hood area. Of course, Jon’s story began much earlier.

“I started out young, playing the violin,” he recalls. “At age 12 I was in the orchestra in Napa. But I found out that if you wanna make money, you have to play on Saturday night and then you take your suit off, put your violin away, and go back to your day job. I decided nope. Not gonna do it.”

So, with his grandfather’s violin in hand, he moved to Fresno and ultimately switched to guitar. “It’s got frets — easier to get the notes right,” he says.

Where did his unique guitar style come from? “It came from my mother. She had a natural finger-picking style,” he says, then adds, “The entire time I was in utero, she played that guitar – I felt that vibration. I picked it up.”

Jon spent time in Berkeley, California as a photographer before moving north. In 1967, he settled into the home his grandfather had built and began teaching guitar at Mt. Hood Community College. It was there he met Mollie, who became his wife.

In the years to come, Jon called Brightwood home, but he traveled the West Coast extensively, touring with other artists, playing festivals, concerts, and coffeehouses – especially in California. In the summer of 1971, he started traveling with the Portable Folk Festival, a troupe of entertainers who toured the festival scene. The photos he took while on the road with his bandmates are straight out of that era, with bandmates reading and lounging in the bus, woodsy camp cooking scenes, and smiling faces onstage. Many of those friendships have lasted a lifetime. 

Meanwhile, the mountain community was growing. By 1980, a group of music-loving locals – many of them musicians or artists themselves – came together to bring high-quality live music to the mountain. The Mountain Music Society was born.

A newspaper clipping from that era quoted local entertainer Will Frank, who described the group as “loosely knit,” with no chairman or steering committee. Still, Will was behind much of the booking and planning. Jon played a big role too, when he wasn’t touring.

His artistic reach extended to pen and ink. His flyers and posters were playful, precise, and instantly recognizable. A single poster could advertise an event while also standing alone as a work of art, often pinned to walls long after the show. With his camera, he documented performances, preserving moments that might otherwise have been lost.

Of course, Jon performed. The local paper at the time, The Mountain, carried a series of photos of him playing at Will Frank’s Natural Foods and Café – known locally simply as The Store – with the memorable caption: “Jon Adams performing behind Lemon Soufflé and Chocolate Decadence.” The times were rich and engaging.

The Mountain Music Society emphasized paying musicians fairly, mostly booking traditional, classical, and folk artists. “We’ve got a lot of Irish freaks up the mountain,” Frank smiled. A $5 membership provided access to concerts, discounts, and a sense of belonging. For Jon, the Society was a natural extension of his earlier coffeehouse days touring up and down the West Coast.

Now in his eighties, Jon reflects from his home in Lake Oswego, surrounded by CDs, music books, writing and drawing paper, with posters and photos covering the walls. “Music and art have been my life,” he says. “And still are.”

On Mt. Hood, that legacy lingers. Today, local talents fill a variety of mountain venues with new songs and new tales. The music continues, but the memories remain – in posters folded in drawers, in photographs of musicians from the past, in yellowed newspaper clippings, and in the recollections of neighbors who still remember the hush of a house concert when Jon’s music filled McLundy’s Green Room.