Photos by Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Alexia Smith (left), Seeger's widow, stands with Vivian Leva.

Becky McKenzie (back left) calls a circle dance during a celebration and memorial for musician Mike Seeger held Sunday afternoon at The Theater at Lime Kiln in Rockbridge County.

LEXINGTON -- For American roots music fans, Mike Seeger was a beacon of preservation, both as a performer and a documentarian. For folks around Lexington and Rockbridge County, he was a good neighbor and friend.

About 150 people gathered on a sunny, breezy Sunday at The Theater at Lime Kiln in Lexington to celebrate both sides of Seeger, who died Aug. 7 at age 75. He had suffered from an aggressive form of bone marrow cancer.

Seeger, a six-time Grammy nominee and half-brother of folk music icon Pete Seeger, was instrumental from about the mid-1950s in documenting performances, spreading the word and reigniting interest in such folk musicians as Elizabeth Cotten (who had been the Seeger family's maid), Dock Boggs and Ernest "Pop" Stoneman. Mike Seeger was also a co-founder of old-time revivalists the New Lost City Ramblers.

Seeger added to the American musical experience "not just by way of his voice and all the instruments that he played but by bringing all these great musicians to our ears," Lexington-based musician James Leva said, opening the memorial. "He allowed people who had lived the American experience, both black and white ... to sing and share their experience with us."

So of course, on Sunday, there was plenty of good, old music coming from Lime Kiln's "bowl" stage. But in between performances, speakers reminisced about what Seeger had meant to both the larger music world and their own community.

Fellow folk and old-time music performer David Winston said the traveling picker and singer was rootless and lonely, looking for a place to call home when he got hold of Winston in 1981 and asked about Lexington. It was a time of fun and freedom for the area, which was in the midst of an old-time music revival, and folks weren't quite sure what to make of Seeger, who seemed tight and socially awkward.

"But ours was a community filled with characters, and we welcomed one more," Winston said, to laughter from the crowd.

And Seeger welcomed them into his own rambling home, filled with books and instruments.

"We discovered that any time we asked, he would always share his considerable resources ... and he was always more interested in our music than his own," Winston said.

In 1995, he married Alexia Smith. Winston remembered the post-wedding party at Seeger's home -- the groom bounced among groups, singing a verse here, kicking up a buck dance there.

"Over the years, he assumed some of the lightness and grace of his life partner," Winston said.

But life for Seeger was more than performances and parties. Kit Huffman, a writer for the Lexington News-Gazette, said that he took the lead in helping to preserve the local Brushy Hills woodlands when the city was considering selling several hundred acres for development. Seeger might have been the first to write a letter to the editor on the topic, Huffman said. The letter was inspiring and helped to save the woodlands, he added.

As important as his friendships and local social interactions were, they were not why National Public Radio, The New York Times and the United Kingdom's The Guardian published stories about him. He was in the thick of the 1950s-1960s folk revival. Living legends such as Bob Dylan counted him as an influence.

"He loved Elizabeth Cotten, John Jackson and Dock Boggs, and he worked to showcase their music," Winston said. "But he always did it from the background. He never attached himself to their importance."