Music is such a life-giving thing for me. It’s my life at this point. I really love making a band or a jam work.”

That’s Annie Trimble, Edward Avenue, describing her role as guitarist and singer in Bertha and the Belles, a four-person acoustic quartet that performs regularly throughout the Pittsburgh area. Although Trimble’s background is in bluegrass and folk music, the group also dips into swing, country, spiritual music and fiddle tunes. A few of them, like You Can’t Get There from Here, about Pittsburgh’s highway system, were written by Trimble.

The Bertha in the group’s name refers to the upright bass played by the one male in the ensemble, Richard Gordon. The other members are fiddler Alice Backer and vocalist and banjo uke player Pam Hawley. The three women sing in tight harmony, with Trimble supplying the low notes.

Bertha and the Belles has performed locally at the Sunnyhill Unitarian Universalist Church, as well as Mt. Lebanon Public Library’s summer Music in the Courtyard series.

Trimble, a retired technical writer, is an experienced fine artist as well. She has been drawing all her life and has exhibited works in oil, pastels, graphite and digital; she is a past president of the South Hills Art League. But it is Bertha and the Belles that takes up most of her attention right now.

”It’s been my dream to sing harmony with two other women. It’s a really democratic band. Everybody brings a song or two,” she said. ”I do bluegrass and old-time stuff. Pam likes the show songs and the oldies. Alice brings fiddle tunes and some swing stuff. I just love working on arrangements and harmony. I love this band!” The group performs once a month, on average.

Trimble grew up in California, in a big family that sang and played cowboy songs and folk music together. She learned guitar in her early teens and began performing in various groups in college. ”It was the late ‘60s, and all that great folk-rock music was out there: Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Peter Paul, and Mary,” she said. ”I just took it and
ran with it. I played bluegrass for a very
long time.”

She came to the North Hills in 1989 when her former husband took a job in Pittsburgh. Although they split up, she stayed in the area, eventually remarrying and moving to Mt. Lebanon with her two children in 1994. ”Pittsburgh was a wonderful place to start over. The music community welcomed me.”

At a music festival in West Virginia, Trimble discovered old-time Appalachian fiddle music — and learned to play it on the fiddle. ”It was the basis for the bluegrass I had been playing in California. The roots are here and in West Virginia and North Carolina. It’s a really welcoming genre of music, where everybody plays at the same time. And also very social.”

She began playing guitar and fiddle with a number of area musicians and performed in a duo called South Wind with her second husband, Curt Cooper, until his death a few years ago. She also played in Irish bands, Cajun bands, for contra dances, and with many other groups.

”I love all genres of music: cowboy, old-time, bluegrass, folk. I’m involved with a bunch of music friends here, and we do song swaps. I’m not a showoff, but I am a damn good rhythm player in a lot of genres. People like to have me play, and it’s so satisfying. God gave me this talent of being able to hear and sing and play guitar, and I’m grateful.”

Trimble finds Mt. Lebanon to be fertile territory for musicians and other artists. ”I have several musician friends who live close by. One’s a fiddler and I’ve played in a bluegrass band with him for years. And we have some South Hills jams here.”

She loves her tree-lined neighborhood with its classic old houses. ”I’ve lived here for 32 years, and it’s 100 years old this year. It’s only a couple blocks from Lincoln School and I can walk to Beverly Road from here. Mt. Lebanon is a great place to live.”