It wasn’t the beer or the burgers. They came for Jeff “Coutch” Couture, a fiddler and carpenter who was found dead at his home Monday, and they memorialized him with well over five hours of songs.

At first, it was so crowded that the musicians there for the weekly Wednesday night jam — of which Coutch was a regular member — didn’t have their normal spot, a circle of chairs in the dining room. Instead, they were positioned next to a cardboard cut-out of a snow bunny and the men’s bathroom. The pool table was no longer a pool table. It acted more like a mom and dad’s bed at a Christmas party, a place for everyone to throw their stuff — jackets, guitars, instrument cases soft and hard, butts, a washboard with the words “Sunny Land” printed across the top. A collection of stubby beer bottles and their inevitable wet rings are not exactly proper pool table etiquette, but it didn’t matter that night.

The players, illuminated only by a neon beer sign and the pool table lamp that advertised Molson Canadian, took turns picking old bluegrass, folk and country tunes. The crowd was full of familiar faces, even if some haven’t played at the Wednesday night jam in years. These people see each regularly, but gathering all in one nostalgic location was something special.

Nigel Darrah gently beat a bodhran, Alex Marklund picked his guitar, making that unique face that on the surface looks like rage but is actually enjoyment. Jenny Curtis tapped and scratched a wire drumstick along the Sunny Land scratch board. Instead of sitting, cellist Dave Filsinger tied the large string instrument to his front with a special wool strap he bought in Boone, North Carolina. His bow sat in a large pocket attache to his waist like .44 Magnum in its holster. The man of the hour influenced Filsinger to play by ear. Russ Mulvey of the swing jazz group Crackin’ Foxy plucked at the deep strings of his stand-up bass. Taped to the side of the bass was a set list from a previous gig: “Egyptian Ella,” “Drinking Red,” “Nagasaki.” Ben Hamelin, a regular, hadn’t yet picked up his acoustic guitar. He wanted to give other people a chance to play first.

From left, Addison Bickford, Alex Marklund, Marion Hoelzel and Brady Callan jam in a corner of the Shamrock tavern in Gabriels Wednesday night in memory of their friend Jeff Couture, who was found dead at his home Monday. (Enterprise photo — Griffin Kelly)

Everybody took turns soloing. Even if you’re not the best musician, you try your best, and you don’t feel beneath the others. Sometimes it was hard to tell what the song was, so players in the thick would turn around and show chords to players in the back.

I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, but the flashes from my Canon, the size of my camera bag and my instinctual “right behind you”s from my days as a server slightly alleviated that mystique.

After one song finished, a sharp finger whistle came from the players. It was Shamim Allen. She plays guitar and sings in the Dust Bunnies and also co-owns the Fiddlehead Bistro only two doors down from my apartment.

“I think we should take a moment to appreciate an Adirondack gentleman, who’s not here.” She hesitated. “Well, he is here.”

With glasses and bottles raised, the crowd said, “To Coutch,” and all took a sip.

People in the back wondered why the tall guy was writing in his reporter’s notebook.

Sure, grief and sorrow hung in the air like smoke in a house fire, but Coutch’s friends stayed underneath it, offering each other hugs and smiles like a wet rag. You could never hear the full conversation between his friends, but through randomly caught words — gentle, kind, wonderful, magical, sweet, talented, impressive — you can kind of piece together who Coutch was and what he meant to decades of Adirondack artists.

Allen described him as a magical string player.

“He would take a guitar and play it upside down and backward like Hendrix,” she said. “You normally saw him with a guitar or a fiddle, but one day he just picked up a cello and was brilliant at it.”

Coutch came up to Paul Smith’s College for higher education in the 1970s and never left. Like so many before and after him, the Adirondacks became his home. He helped form local bands such as the Old Mountain String Band and North Branch. He was a humble and helpful person, the type of guy who would operate the sound board at BluSeed Studios and stay out past midnight to break down tents and clean up after Hobofest. He just turned 60 in September, but his influence and friendship lingered between generations.

“I only knew him for 10 years,” Filsinger said. “Only” didn’t seem like the correct modifier to me when followed by “10 years.”

“It sounds long, but Mary Lou Reid has known him for almost 40,” Filsinger said.

Local people younger than I posted memorial comments on Facebook to Coutch. I didn’t know the man myself, but after seeing a picture, I remembered he was the guy with the ponytail I would see at the Waterhole from time to time.

Helen Demong, the retired vocal music teacher at Saranac Lake High School, looked at the sheer number of people who showed up for the memorial jam and simply said, “You can tell he was loved.”