The musical stylings of Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams have always been attractive to John Lilly.
"Ever since I was 2 or 3 years old it's always been the music I've been drawn to," said Lilly, a country-blues musician and winner of the 2005 Hank Williams Songwriting Contest.
Yodeling is an important part of the West Virginian musician's style, Lilly said. He will bring his music and his yodeling to State College when he teaches a free yodeling workshop from 4 to 5 p.m. Saturday at the Center for Well Being in Lemont. Lilly will also perform an evening concert at 7:30 p.m.
Though yodeling came to Lilly somewhat naturally, he said he hit his share of bad notes along the way.
"I made some horrible noises for a long time, then finally got to where I could hit and hold my notes and people wanted to hear it," he said.
Lilly said yodeling is a difficult art to teach.
"I can teach people how to break their voice and try a basic simple yodel," he said. "Nobody's gonna become a professional yodeler after an hour, but everybody can have fun learning about it and trying to make that sound."
The workshop is sponsored by the Acoustic Brew Concert Series' Folks Learnin' Folk series with a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. The series' last workshop was about bluegrass, said Sally Driscoll, the Acoustic Brew concert series community outreach organizer. She said the group tries to sponsor diverse types of workshops on topics including songwriting, fiddle and guitar.
Driscoll said Lilly has done a workshop in State College before and that he is "back by popular demand." She added that all different people will enjoy Lilly's workshop.
"You don't need any experience. You don't even need to be a singer," she said. "He'll get everybody standing up yodeling by the end of the hour."
The Center for Well Being is "an optimal environment for music lovers," Driscoll said, because it is intimate, has excellent sound quality and all shows are entirely acoustic.
Driscoll said students should attend the workshop and Lilly's performance because it's an experience they can't necessarily get on campus.
"Students are always encouraged to come because [the workshops] are free and they're fun and they get you away from campus for a little while," she said. "Come out and hear some music that you might not hear in the HUB."
