LIVE OAK, Fla. — Skip Johns has performed all across the country, including at the Grand Ole Opry.

But none of that compares to the feeling the Lake City native gets following a SongFarmers gathering, whether it’s the SongFarmers of the Suwannee Valley or the SongFarmers of Live Oak.

“I don’t think I’ve seen anything (like it),” he said Thursday night after the Live Oak gathering at the Live Oak branch of the Suwannee River Regional Library System. The group meets the last Thursday of the month at the library at 6 p.m.

“I’ve played, professionally, since I was about 16 years old. I chased money and I chased fame and chased everything as hard as anybody ever saw. But this has been more fulfilling to me than anything I’ve ever done.

“It’s just cool.”

It’s cool to Johns because the gatherings are informal music jams in which musicians of all ages, backgrounds and talent levels are able to come together and just play.

At the August gathering in Live Oak, there were 11 musicians in the circle and approximately 40 people in the audience.

It was the largest gathering yet for the newest SongFarmers chapter, the fourth in Florida. Johns said the Suwannee Valley chapter, which originally met in White Springs before moving to Lake City, had just four musicians and five in the audience when it first met.

“This is a really good time,” said Johns, , whose wife Linda is the chapter leader of the Live Oak chapter while he serves as the leader of the Suwannee Valley group. “It’s wholesome entertainment.”

And much like Johns enjoys about it, the group performing Thursday included musicians ranging from two pre-teenage girls in Jessica Ellis and McKayden Wilkerson to men that believed themselves to be rockers at one time, such as Mike Thornton.

Thornton, who is originally from Gilchrist County before moving to Branford recently, said his first gathering will not be his last.

“I enjoyed it,” Thornton said. “It’s real personable, I guess you can say. With everybody sitting in the circle and playing the songs.”

Thornton said while he used to play rock and roll, he lately has been focused on learning gospel music so he can play at church. One of his selections Thursday was “I believe.”

Other selections included Wilkerson playing a song she has written herself to “SongFarmer Blues” to the gathering concluding “Will the circle be unbroken.”

That array of music and the fact that every person in the circle gets turns choosing the music and singing are enjoyable to Johns. And he believes to all the others.

“When people come, they know they’re going to get to sing,” he said. “And it doesn’t matter how good they are and it doesn’t matter how bad they are, they’re still going to get to sing.

“It’s just a win-win all the way around. There’s nothing that you can find wrong with this except the next time we’ll go for two hours instead of an hour and a half.”