It was a night of musical dichotomies, introspection, sing-a-longs, and fiddle players who stole the show.

Simply put, the Hurdy Gurdy Folk Music Club produced a pure night of fun at the Fair Lawn Community Center over the weekend.

Dave Rowe, the headliner act, called the Hurdy Gurdy club "a community treasure." His group, the Dave Rowe Trio, came down from Maine to perform folk music, classic songs, and songs Rowe recorded.

But before the trio performed on Saturday night, singer Jennifer Johnson of Eastern Pennsylvania played fiddle, guitar and piano. Her music ranged from the Celtic fiddle to a full, rich jazz sound on the piano. 

Each of the instruments she played transported the audience to a meditative, contemplative world. As she played fiddle with precision and intensity, it was understandable to see how she once injured her shoulder while playing the instrument.

Yet, when Johnson played guitar and played her original song "Strawberry Moon," about falling in love during strawberry harvest time, her music echoed Canadian music star Chantal Kreviazuk in style and substance. 

But behind the piano, you could see Johnson reach back into the world of songs that were popular in the 1930s and 1940s, and you fully understood why she enjoys them.

When Rowe and his fellow musicians—Kevin O'Reilly on bass and Zach Ovington on fiddle—took the stage, the flavor of the show changed. It went from being calm and relaxing to an energetic sing-a-long.

Rowe engaged the crowd, told jokes and dedicated much of his time to discussing his late father Tom, who had performed for Hurdy Gurdy with the bands Schooner Fare and Turkey Hollow. But when Rowe sang the first song, about a drunk gambler wandering the back roads, he sang with a folk warble, "If the moonshine don't kill me, I'll drink 'til I die." 

As Rowe played his acoustic guitar, he played it with style and grace and plucked it like a harp.

Ovington, the fiddle player, stole the show. He played and plucked as if it were more than just a violin. He would joke while plucking it like a chicken and stomping in a way that would have made Mick Jagger proud. 

In between sets, O'Reilly, the bass player, would joke with a dry wit, returning any quip Rowe dished out right back to him.

As the three men played, a quick glance of the audience showed people nodding to the music and clapping. The crowd clearly had a good time. 

The biggest surprise of the evening came when Rowe, who said he was suffering from a cold and that his voice was a bit gravely, encored with a piano rendition of "O, Holy Night." But as he hit the high note of "Oh night...Devine..." he stepped from the world of folk into the world of "Three Tenors."

To close the night in true Rowe style, he sang a risque version of "Give Me that Old Time Religion," with the verse "Give me the druids who drank fermented fluids and ran naked in the woods." 

However, the feeling of the evening—of Rowe, his trio, Johnson, and the music of the Hurdy Gurdy club—could be summed up in Rowe's own lyrics: "The music never dies, the music never dies, long live the bards, the music never dies."