On November 12, musician Mayne Smith died peacefully at his home in Richmond, following complications from a fall. The beloved fixture of the Northern California music scene was 86 years old.

Initially a bluegrass musician with a tenor voice that could reach high B with ease, Mayne expanded into country music and country-rock. His resonator guitar and pedal steel anchored a number of bands over the years, including The Frontier, Detour, and the many ad-hoc groups that appeared as Alternate Routes, a monthly jam session that Mayne hosted at the Freight & Salvage. Summers would find him camping at the Sweets Mill Music Camp, east of Fresno and halfway up the Sierras, where he hosted countless jam sessions.

Mayne served as Board Chairman for the Berkeley Society for the Preservation of Traditional Music during a crucial period, when the Freight & Salvage was moving from its original home on San Pablo Avenue to its less funky but more spacious digs on Addison. In subsequent years that iconic concert venue moved uptown — literally and figuratively — to its current location in the center of Berkeley’s arts district. Mayne’s steady leadership and open ears proved essential to the successful, community-focused effort that has come to characterize both the Society and the Freight.

The son of Eleanor and Professor Henry Nash Smith (who co-founded American Studies as an academic discipline), Mayne grew up in a series of college towns. Berkeley was the last and most essential. His own academic work culminated in a master’s degree thesis, “Bluegrass Music and Musicians: An Introductory Study of a Musical Style in Its Cultural Context” (Indiana University, 1964), the genre’s first academic analysis.

Recordings include “Places I’ve Been: a Songmaker’s Retrospective,” and, with longtime partner Mitch Greenhill, “Storm Coming,” “Back Where We’ve Never Been,” and “Live 1976.” Other hard-to-find recordings include “The Lost Frontier” and “Travelin’ Lady,” in which The Frontier accompanies Rosalie Sorrels. Rosalie recorded Mayne’s compositions, published by Hillgreen Music, as did Linda Ronstadt in her early years with the Stone Poneys.

Mayne Smith is survived by his wife Gail Wilson-Smith, son Noah Smith, granddaughter, sisters Harriet and Janet Smith, and a host of bereft jamming buddies.