John Lilly advised a room of adults and children Saturday to sit up straight, take a deep breath and let out a little yodel.

"1-2-3-4 yodel-ay-hee-hoo," he sang as the audience joined in. "That little break in your voice is what makes a yodel," he said.

Lilly's 4 to 5 p.m. free yodeling workshop, held at the Center for Well Being in Lemont, mixed instruction with history, personal anecdotes and performance. Lilly also performed at the center at 7:30 p.m.

The workshop was funded by a grant through the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and sponsored by the Acoustic Brew Concert Series' Folks Learnin' Folk series.

This is the second time Lilly has offered the workshop in Lemont, said Sally Driscoll, the Acoustic Brew community outreach organizer. She said the last time Lilly held the workshop at the Center for Well Being was about three years ago.

He began the workshop with his own song, "A Little Yodel Goes a Long Way." After inviting the participants to try yodeling, he shared his own experience as an 18-year-old beginner.

"My first six months of yodeling was in a truck, with no muffler and no radio, by myself," he said. "I couldn't even hear myself."

The small audience tried a "simple Jimmie Rodgers yodel" in every key, starting with the lowest, as Lilly guided their notes with his guitar.

The participants also tried adding syllables to the yodel and stretching the yodel out, holding each note for a longer period of time.

The workshop was peppered with performances of Lilly's own songs and covers of Jimmie Rodgers, Gene Autry and Hank Williams songs.

Lilly said one of his favorite songs to sing in the workshop was Rodgers' "Sleep Baby, Sleep," from The Bristol Sessions, a historic recording session that popularized Rodgers. The lullaby was the first song by Rodgers to incorporate yodeling, he said.

"It's interesting to me that the country music industry started with a lullaby," he said. "You probably wouldn't think yodeling could be used as a lullaby."

Mel DeYoung, board member for Acoustic Brew, said the yodeling workshop is a way of exposing people to a new experience.

"It has a neat history to it and is something that people find intriguing," he said. "It's fun and something not a lot of people have given a try."

Lilly said he likes to use the workshop to help familiarize others with the art of yodeling.

"It is a mysterious art," he said. "It is something that people have heard, but it's sort of a lost sound because it's not heard so often that people understand it. I'm hoping I'm able to break it down a little."

Lilly said his music does not focus primarily on yodeling, but yodeling is an aspect of his singing people tend to remember because it is unexpected. He said his workshops feature much more yodeling than his usual performances.

"It's a way to kind of brush the cobwebs off my yodeler," he said.