Blues at Centrum

The Friday Night Blues Mainstage and Club Shows

This post refers to an event that occurred in the past. For current event/workshop information, visit www.centrum.org/blues, and follow the workshop or performance links at the top right,

MAINSTAGE SCHEDULE
Friday, August 3, 7:30 pm
McCurdy Pavilion

Reserved seating $16; youth 18 and under attend for free. Tickets are available by calling Centrum at 360.385.3102, x117 as well as online at our secure Acteva website. 

National Heritage Fellow Concert—Celebrating the 25th anniversary of the National Heritage Award
1. Eddie Pennington
2. Henry Gray
3. John Cephas and Phil Wiggins

FRIDAY NIGHT CLUB SHOWS (10 pm - 1 am)

$16 cover charge includes admission to all clubs. Tickets are available by calling Centrum at 360.385.3102, x117. Tickets are also available at the front doors of individual clubs.

Water Street Brewing
9 pm: Hillstomp
10 pm: Hillstomp
11 pm: Robert “Wolfman” Belfour

Sirens
9 pm: Lightnin’ Wells
10 pm: John Miller
11 pm: Eric Freeman

The Public House
9 pm: Del Rey
10 pm: Del Rey & Steve James
11 pm: The Lurrie Bell Band

The Upstage
9 pm: Allen Holmes
10 pm: Jude Taylor and the Zydeco Flames
11 pm: Jude Taylor and the Zydeco Flames

The Boiler Room
9 pm: Andra Faye 
10 pm: Elijah Wald
11 pm: Lauren Sheehan

The Uptown Pub
9 pm: Terry “Harmonica” Bean
10 pm: The Gallus Brothers
11 pm: The Gallus Brothers

Lanza’s
9 pm: Erwin Helfer
10 pm: Eleanor Ellis
11 pm: Annieville Blues

Still Time to Go Gospel

This post refers to an event that occurred in the past. For current event/workshop information, visit www.centrum.org/blues, and follow the workshop or performance links at the top right,

One of the highlights each year of the Port Townsend Country Blues Festival is the gospel-singing workshop. Participants include full workshop students, as well as folks from the community who come just for this workshop all week. The choir sessions meet daily from 3:30-5pm. We'd love to see (and hear) you, and there is plenty of space. For registration information, read our earlier post on the gospel workshop.

Eric Freeman Playing the Piedmont Blues at Centrum

This post refers to an event that occurred in the past. For current event/workshop information, visit www.centrum.org/blues, and follow the workshop or performance links at the top right,

[Eric Freeman playing guitar at a Centrum Country Blues workshop]

Eric Freeman is a young Piedmont guitar player who learned directly from John Jackson. He's developed his own high-energy style and knows, teaches, and performs a great repertoire of authentic Piedmont tunes. He'll be bringing his distinctive flair and feel for the blues to the Port Townsend Country Blues Festival July 29-August 5, jamming, leading workshops, and giving mainstage and club performances.

He gives a mainstage performance at Fort Worden's McCurdy Pavilion on Saturday, August 4, at 1:30 pm and club performances on both Friday, August 3 and Saturday, August 4 on downtown Port Townsend's historic waterfront. Tickets are available by calling Centrum at 360.385.3102, x127 and online at our secure Acteva site.

I'm Not Hungry But I Like to Eat: Chicago Musical Treasure Erwin Helfer

In his early twenties, Erwin Helfer broke racial barrers by moving from Chicago to New Orleans to live in a black neighborhood. This was in the nineteen-fifties, when crossing racial lines could land you in jail, or worse.

While in New Orleans, Erwin studied with Professor Longhair and Tuts Washington, worked with trumpeter Punch Miller, and recorded with Peg Leg Willie and Big Joe Williams.

When he moved back to Chicago, he became an integral part of the city’s blues culture throughout the nineteen-sixties and seventies. He was the accompanist for Mama Yancey—the wife of Chicago blues piano patriarch Jimmy “Papa” Yancey—and released piano duet albums with Jimmy Walker.

Erwin performs regularly at Chicago clubs and annually at the Chicago Blues Festival. His local gigs and frequent European tours have created a strong and loyal following in Chicago and overseas.

He has also performed multiple times in Asia, and the list of all the musicians he’s performed and recorded with is a Who’s Who of blues.

Now seventy, Erwin is a veteran Chicago pianist, who can pound out a down-to-earth boogie and low-down twelve-bar grind or take his audience to the swinging urban elegance of a concert hall. His albums include St. James Infirmary, 8 Hands On 88 Keys, 2003’s I’m Not Hungry But I Like to Eat, (which was nominated for a W.C. Handy Award), and Careless Love.

To hear an NPR story on Erwin Helfer's music and listen to samples of Erwin’s piano playing, follow this link. 

Erwin Helfer will be in residence at the 2007 Port Townsend Country Blues Festival, teaching, jamming, and passing on the stories and the traditions of the blues. On Saturday, August 4, at 1:30 pm, he gives a mainstage performance at McCurdy Pavilion, along with such other blues legends as Robert “Wolfman” Belfour, Paul Rishell and Annie Raines, and the griot stylings of Cheick Hamala Diabaté.

Erwin also plays sets in the intimate clubs of Port Townsend both August 3 and 4, at Lanza’s. Tickets are available by calling Centrum at 360.385.3102, x117 and online at our secure Acteva site. 

From Baseball to the Blues: Terry "Harmonica" Bean

Terry "Harmonica" Bean has decades of experience with the blues. A lifelong resident of Pontotoc, Bean first heard the downhome blues at home. His father, Eddie Bean, sang and played blues guitar and prior to Terry’s birth traveled with an electric blues band. Listen to the music of Terry “Harmonica” Bean: "Rockin' in the Dirty South," "How Many More Yesrs" and "Why Do Men Go Crazy," here.

Terry Bean was one of fourteen children. His father worked as a sharecropper, and Bean picked cotton in the fields surrounding the family home of "Bean Hill."

Terry began playing guitar and harmonica as a child, and eventually his father began featuring him at the home gatherings and taking him along to other house parties. Although Terry was a “natural,” he stopped playing around the time he was twelve because several of his brothers were jealous of the attention he was receiving. (Today, however, Terry's brother Jimmy plays in Terry’s blues band, while brother Jerry Lee sings gospel as well as lead vocals in the Pontotoc-based Legends of the Blues.)

Giving up the blues for a time, Terry turned his attention to baseball. At various levels of amateur and semi-professional play, Terry pitched five no-hitters and attracted scouts from several professional teams. A professional career in baseball was curtailed, however, due to two automotive accidents.

In 1988, Bean went to see Robert Junior Lockwood at the Delta Blues Festival in Greenville, South Carolina. Bean fell in with the Greenville blues scene. Every weekend for three years he traveled to Greenville to play harmonica with James "T-Model" Ford and Asie Payton at various juke joints. He also played across the Delta with such artists as Lonnie Pitchford.

Bean formed a band and began playing guitar himself after becoming frustrated with teaching others his  ideal sound. Following the lead of Arkansas bluesman John Weston, he started using a harmonica rack and performing as a one-man band, stomping his feet for percussion.

Since 2002 he has released six CDs. “What’s stimulating to me,” Bean says, “is people hearing the blues played like they used to hear it.”

Terry "Harmonica" Bean will be in residence at the 2007 Port Townsend Country Blues Festival, teaching, jamming, and passing on the stories and the traditions. On Saturday, August 4, at 1:30 pm, he'll give a mainstage performance at McCurdy Pavilion. He plays sets in the intimate clubs of Port Townsend both August 3 and 4. Tickets are available by calling Centrum at 360.385.3102, x117 and online at our secure Acteva site. 

Good Times: Cephas & Wiggins

[John Cephas and Phil Wiggins live onstage]

National Heritage Fellow John Cephas and legendary harmonica player Phil Wiggins playing "Dog Days of August" at the Bluebird Blues Festival in 2005. Cephas and Wiggins will perform at the Port Townsend Country Blues Festival in a mainstage performance August 3, at 7:30 pm. Tickets are available by calling Centrum at 360.385.3102, x117 or online at our secure Acteva site.

The Legendary Phil Wiggins on Harmonica

[Phil Wiggins live at the 2007 Smithsonian Folklife Festival]

Phil Wiggins, Artistic Director for the Port Townsend Country Blues Festival, will give a special performance at McCurdy Pavilion on Friday, August 3, at 7:30 pm. He will play with National Heritage Fellow John Cephas. Their set culminates the National Heritage Fellow Concert, led off by blues legends Eddie Pennington and Henry Gray. Reserved seating is $20/16, with tickets for those 18 years of age or younger $5. Tickets are available by calling Centrum at 360.385.3102, x117 or online at our secure Acteva site.