OGDEN — Go ahead, sing along with Bill Staines during his concert, he won’t mind a bit.

A lad of the 1960s, this veteran folksinger says everybody was always singing along to the tunes of Pete Seeger or Peter, Paul and Mary.

“That was imbued into my being early, early on; I still enjoy people singing along on the chorus,” he said.

Now Top of Utah music lovers get their chance to do just that when Staines performs Wednesday, Oct. 7, in the Twitchell House Concert Series.

It’s the sixth year Staines has included Ogden on a 14,000-mile cross-country tour that starts at his home in New Hampshire and winds up in either Montana or Alaska.

“I love playing for people — this is my 50th year doing it,” Staines said in a phone interview from Rollinsford. “I love bringing music to people.”

And house concerts like the one presented by the Ogden Friends of Acoustic Music are a nice change of pace for this singer of stage, TV and radio.

“It’s an intimate, very warm to place to play and I just enjoy it a lot,” Staines said.

Kara Twitchell, co-host of the house concert with her husband Roger, said the back room over the couple’s garage is a more personal setting than hearing someone like Staines in a jam-packed arena where “you’re just there.”

About 30 to 60 people typically attend the Twitchell House events, she said, and yes, indeed, they will be singing along with Staines.

“It’s OK here — it’s the best part,” she says. 

Ramblin’ man.

Troubadour Staines logs 65,000 miles per year on the road, be it returning to old haunts or discovering new ones.

“Every day is sort of an adventure,” he said, noting the people he meets are the best part of the journey.

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The artist’s career is rooted in his native New England, where he began performing in the Boston and Cambridge folk music scene. He has 26 albums to his credit and his songs have been recorded by everyone from Nanci Griffith to Makem & Clancy and Jerry Jeff Walker.

Red House Records describes Staines’ music as “a slice of Americana, filled with cowboys, Yukon adventures, fishermen and everyday working people.”

This singer-songwriter said when he talks to others about writing music he encourages them to write great songs “about great things — living and dying and home and work and all of the things we all experience.”

In all of those realms, he said, “There are stories that are told that lift people up.”

A story about an old dog — say, his, “Old Dogs” — is something everyone can relate to, he said. Or so is a story about love, like his “Song for Tingmissartaq,” a tribute to the flying adventures of Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne.

Not everything he writes will be a smash hit, but Staines said he just tries to watch for the “little victories” in life, whether it’s Peter, Paul and Mary deciding to record a song of his or someone taking him out dog sledding.

“I look forward to those things; 98 percent of the time they don’t happen but there’s always tomorrow,” he said.

Larry Marcus

Singing critters

Staines is also a writer of children’s songs such as “All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir.” That popular tune came about in the 1970s when Staines said he had been writing a rash of ballads and love songs.

“I just opened my mouth and ‘All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir Came Out,’ ” he explained. He said he wrote the song in about 10 minutes and the first time he performed it, at a college in western New York, the audience loved it.

“It was a lot like a little cartoon, like a little doodle,” he said, but, “It was really a cartoon that took off.”

The piece illustrates how songs really are like children to a songwriter, Staines said. “This song is brought into the world and unless you nurture it, it’s going to die,” he said. But after a time of nurturing, the song “grows up” and goes out into the world, he explained, and just where it is, or how many people sing it or know about it, is unknown to the songwriter.

“It’s out there doing what it’s doing,” he quipped.

Staines is 68 but hanging up his guitar and retiring isn’t on his horizon. He recalled that when folks used to ask Irish folksinger Tommy Makem, “Tommy, when are you going to retire?” Tommy would answer, “Oh, by 10 o’clock tonight.”

As Staines said, “That’s kind of the way I feel.”

Contact reporter Becky Cairns at 801-625-4276 or bcairns@standard.net. Follow her on Twitter at @bccairns or like her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SEbeckycairns.

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PREVIEW:

• What: Bill Staines at Twitchell House Concerts

• When: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 7; potluck, 6:30 p.m.

• Where: Twitchell residence, 1514 23rd St., Ogden

• Tickets: $15 suggested donation; reservations recommended, 801-393-3420.