Pickings Weren’t Slim at Music Festival : Camarillo: The city’s annual showcase attracts 300 people to Dizdar Park.

They brought guitars and picks, potato chips and dips to Camarillo’s Acoustic Music Festival, where 300 people gathered Saturday for an outdoor feast of folk tunes.

During the 10-act show, children shrieked on a carousel, babies crawled on the grass and women played cards in the sun, as music wafted over Dizdar Park.

“I’m enjoying all of them so far,” said Mary Ellen Smith, 68, of Oxnard, as she sat in a lawn chair overseeing her three grandchildren under a shade tree. “And I’m not one for the blues. I like something peppy.”

What started out as an outdoor jam session 10 years ago has evolved into an annual folk and rhythm-and-blues festival, but it has retained its unconventional, informal ambience. Scheduling changes, a cancellation and an act added at the last minute were all part of Ventura County’s home-grown acoustic festival.

Musicians sang and performed on guitars, mandolins, violins, harmonicas and, in one case, a string bass. Some resurrected the music of past years, singing the torch songs of Patsy Cline and strumming the melodies of blues guitarist Muddy Waters.

When the event was organized, “we just did it because we had some time on our hands,” said festival organizer Mike Fishell, who plays guitar professionally.

“It started out small. It started out strictly to have fun in the summer.”

Most of the musicians are from Ventura County, many of them little-known except in smoky bars and restaurants, he added.

“A lot of the bands here, we wouldn’t hear them perform if it weren’t for this festival,” Fishell said.

Musicians stood atop a plywood-and-cinder-block bandstand under an old oak tree.

Phil Salazar, 35, of Ventura, who plays with The Acousticats, picked on a mandolin, then traded it in for a bow and violin to play with his wife, guitarist Kim Loucks, 35.

“It’s become a tradition,” said Salazar, who has performed in nine of the 10 acoustic festivals. Camarillo hosts one of only 10 acoustic music festivals held each year in California, and this one is one of his favorites, he said.

Despite the popularity of acoustic music at outdoor events, many of the musicians have had a difficult time finding an audience for folk music in the bars and nightclubs where they make their living, Salazar said.

“You can square-dance to this music, but you can’t rock ‘n’ roll to it,” he said.

Still, the growth of the folk music audience and the devoted crowd it draws each year has Fishell talking about making the show an international festival that would draw musicians from far and wide.

Not all of the instruments have to be as conventional as guitars and mandolins, Fishell said. In past years, musicians have performed percussion pieces on cardboard boxes, he said.

Two years ago, “we had another guy play that used a milk crate and a hubcap,” he said. “He brought the house down.”