Lynn Routzahn

A Lifetime of Music

Speaking with Lynn Routzahn, you feel like you’ve known him for years. There is an easiness about him, an instant sense of friendship that leads to laughter and the desire to talk longer. The translation of that feeling when it’s onstage is hypnotic and makes you feel at home wherever he is playing.

Lynn was born and raised in the eastern panhandle and his family roots in the area date back to the 1700s. Although he’s had a guitar since he was a kid you don’t get the sense that he’s clamoring to get up on stage, but he’s been on practically every stage within reach.

“I’ve played everywhere from the Dogpatch to the White House.”

The Dogpatch was a roadside biker bar known for its exceptionally gritty atmosphere and colorful clientele, and the White House isn’t (in July of 1995, he got a chance to play there as part of the White House’s Visitors Music Program).

Part of Lynn’s guitar collection at his home studio

Lynn’s music doesn’t keep him just on the stage, he’s also an accomplished writer and composer. Asked by the town of Keedsyville for their 250th anniversary, he put music to a poem written by beloved Maryland poet Folger McKinsey. Working with civil war-centric poet Ken Postalwait, he co-created the 2012 album entitled "Red Hawk: A Civil War Journal”. They are currently working on a new album being released soon.

At five or six years old a young Lynn was at Sunday School just pecking around on the piano keys. The teacher noticed and suggested to his mother that formal training would be good for him. That led to six years of piano and three years of organ lessons. Then came The Fab Four. Seeing the Beatles on TV in 1964 he was fascinated and quickly asked his mom for a guitar. Mostly self-taught, by the ninth grade he had started a band with friends Jimmy Long and Lantz Cox. After playing Creedence and Rolling Stones covers at parties for a while, Lynn enthusiastically recalls the exact date he first played for the public on stage.

“I still remember it! January 23rd, 1971 I played at the Dolphin Tavern in Hagerstown with a country band called ‘Country Cotton’.”

He laughs and says he started playing “pretty regularly” with them, and at that point, he was hooked.

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Lynn plays from the heart, and he gets a lot of that from his friend and mentor Johnny Weese. In the late 1970’s while Lynn was out playing at local taverns, they bumped into each other and struck up a conversation. As their friendship grew, they spent more and more time at the infamous outlaw watering holes of Shepherdstown… about which Lynn emphatically reminds us,

“No matter what you’ve heard, none of the stories are true!”

He laughs and gets a little misty as he recalls his time with Johnny. They would sometimes play onstage together but spent most of their time enjoying each other’s company and talking about the ups and downs of life. Lynn wrote the song “Ghost”, which soulfully expresses his emotions after Johnny’s untimely passing in April of 2003. Johnny was a character like no other. Lynn recalls that everyone, including officiant Rev. Randall Tremba, half expected him to show up at his own funeral as if it had all been a great hoax.

Lynn has spent a lifetime playing music and being on stage. His love for what he’s doing pours through the strings and microphone and puts crowds instantly at ease. He plays almost every weekend somewhere near you, either as a solo act or duo called “The Missing Years”. You can hear familiar tunes or ones he’s written, but all of them are performed with a bit of magic that is specific just to Lynn.

Mark Dorosh and Lynn performing at Black Draft Farm and Distillery in Martinsburg, WV