The official site of the Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival, and other blues education and performance programs offered by Centrum, the nonprofit center for the arts located at Fort Worden State Park, in Port Townsend, Washington.
Thanks to the efforts of some amazing traditional music supporters in Seattle, Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival favorite Lauren Sheehan is in the Library of Congress.
Northwest News Network reporter Tom Banse recently interviewed Lauren about her work, and the work of Dyann and Rick Arthur - the couple that have been working hard to boost the representation of women in the traditional music scene through their "MusicBox Project."
Lauren's reaction to being in the Library Of Congress:
"It's unbelievable ... I am only a little drop in the bucket of oral tradition, but I am a drop in the bucket and wonderful players have passed stuff on to me who have now died. All this being in the Library of Congress is so cool because other people can hear that."
Ann Rabson, who was scheduled to be on piano faculty for the 2011 Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival, has had a recurrence of cancer, and therefore is taking some well-deserved time to heal and won't be joining us in Port Townsend. Our thoughts are with her.
In her place, the fantastic blues and boogie-woogie piano player Arthur Migliazza will teach intermediate and advanced piano to workshop participants. Arthur was born in Hyattsville, Maryland, and began taking classical piano lessons at age nine. He soon found himself under the tutelage of Festival alum Judy Luis-Watson, who introduced him to the soul in blues music. He began listening to blues piano greats such as Otis Spann, Champion Jack Dupree, Jimmy Yancey, Professor Longhair, Jay McShann, Katie Webster, and many more.
Inspired by his immense talent, blues piano luminaries such as Ann Rabson (from Saffire – the Uppity Blues Women), Mr. B, and the great New Orleans keyboard master Henry Butler have all taken Arthur under their collective wing.
In 2005, Arthur was awarded the Tucson Area Music Award for Best Keyboardistand in 2010 he was inducted into the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame. During the past several years, Arthur has been featured on the Cincinnati Blues Fest’s Arches Piano Stage multiple times, and has taught blues piano at Augusta Blues Week in Elkins, WV, and here at Centrum.
In 2009 Arthur released an album of songs with Blues Harmonica player Tom Walbank entitled "Burn Your Bridges. In January 2010 the duo were finalists at the International Blues Challenge held in Memphis, TN. 2010 also saw the release of an EP entitled "Clamdiggers", featuring Arthur on piano and keyboards, Mike Levy on bass and Alejandro Canelos on drums. Arthur currently resides in New York City.
Taj Mahal will join us midweek for a special concert at McCurdy Pavilion on August 3. In addition to the concert appearance, he will be a featured guest at a meet-and-greet, open exclusively to registered workshop participants, earlier in the day.
Composer, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Taj Mahal is one of the most prominent and influential figures in late 20th century blues and roots music. Though his career began more than four decades ago with American blues, he has broadened his artistic scope over the years to include music representing virtually every corner of the world. What ties it all together is his insatiable interest in musical discovery. Over the years, his passion and curiosity have led him around the world, and the resulting global perspective is reflected in his music.
There are musicians who travel a well-worn path, and there are musicians who create something new. We’ve asked the amazing Pura Fé to come to the Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival in 2011 to teach lap slide guitar and vocals because she brings something unique and special to the blues.
Pura Fé is the founding member of the internationally renowned native woman’s a capella trio, ‘Ulali’, and is recognized for creating a new music genre, bringing Native contemporary music to the forefront of the “mainstream” music industry.
Her singing and lap steel guitar playing are spine-tingling. Her lap slide playing is very individual, she's invented her own style, based on backing herself up.
Curious about the linkages between the Native American experience and the Blues experience? Here’s Pura Fé in her own words on the subject:
"People forget Charley Patton was Choctaw, Scrapper Blackwell was Cherokee, all the early jazz and blues people were mixed; it was like another race that gave birth to this rich musical culture, a race that's largely been forgotten about. My people, the Tuscarora of North Carolina, were known for harboring runaway slaves — black, white and Indian. They were escorts on the Underground Railway and helped stir up the slave uprisings that happened around here, so the races have been mixing and influencing each other for a long time.
"The call-and-response thing in blues and gospel and its modulation is what Indians call Stomp Dance," Pura Fé explained. "The blues shuffle rhythm is a Round Dance, the heartbeat of Native music. Taj Mahal talked about this with me. I had been singing with Lee Gates, who is Albert Collins' cousin, and he pointed out how similar my wailing was to the sound of Lee's guitar. Taj said that the wailing guitar you hear in rock and blues is the sound of the powwow singers; nowhere in Africa do you hear that kind of guitar playing. It's obviously a Native expression."
Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival workshop participant Micah Kesselring is making a name for himself at the 2011 International Blues Challenge taking place in Memphis.
Public Radio Station WKNO has a great profile of Micah, who is 17 years old and already in his third IBC. We encourage you to check it out, and listen to the fierce blues this young artist is offering to the world.
We are particularly gratified that Micah talked about the scholarship he received to attend the Port Townsend gathering.
" 'I was awarded scholarship to the Port Townsend Acoustic Blues, and I presented that at the band finals. That was a pretty life-changing achievement,' Kesselring explains. Yes, it was. He met Otis Taylor in Port Townsend, and has since played with Taylor at the prestigious Blues Music Awards in Memphis last year."
At last year's Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival, we recorded an interview with Washboard Chaz. Chaz is based in New Orleans, and is one of the only professional washboard players around. 2009 was his first time at Centrum, and he was such a great teacher, we asked him back to be on faculty at the 2010 Festival.
In this interview, Chaz talks about the history of the washboard, the Port Townsend experience, and playing the blues.
Survey of Slide Guitar with Rev. Robert B. Jones This class teaches the basics of playing in a variety of traditional slide guitar styles. The class will showcase slide styles of artists like Son House, Robert Johnson, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Bukka White, Tampa Red and Blind Willie Johnson.
No previous playing slide guitar experience is necessary, however a basic knowledge of blues fingerpicking is helpful. Students should have a steel stringed guitar (conventional or resonator) and to have a slide/bottleneck.
Slide Guitar Tunes and Techniques with Steve James After a brief musical demo and chronology of slide guitar, two open tunings long used by slide guitarists, "Spanish" and "Vastopol" (i.e.: open G and open D), will be explained. Next some ways that harmonies and phrases with blues tonality can be produced by altering the simple three note chord that forms an open tuning will be detailed; also the slide techniques that produce the clear, sustained tones, vibrato, and subtle control of pitch and dynamics. Also important are the way in which the thumb and fingers of the picking hand are used to combine lower and higher pitches to produce melody, harmony and rhythm simultaneously.
During the remaining days of the program playing and listening skills will be further developed by hearing, and learning by practicing a variety of guitar arrangements (along with devices like tapping, harmonics, and slide bouncing). Expect to play plenty of blues, but it may be spiked with some country, gospel and train imitations.
Just bring your guitar. James'll sell you a slide if you haven't got one. The hand-outs are free. Just don't get him started on that Furry Lewis deal. Wanna record? Ask first.
We have a robust ukulele offering this summer - here are daily offerings from Lightnin' Wells and Del Rey:
Blues Ukulele Styles of the Early 20th Century - Del Rey You’ll learn tunes from Hokum groups like The Pebbles in the '20s, New Orleans blues from Lemon Nash, Piedmont ukulele from Rabbit Muse and some guitar sources that work on uke like Papa Charlie Jackson and Charlie Jordon. Music will be taught by ear - no tab, bring your uke and a recorder and notebook.
Mainland Uke - Lightnin’ Wells You’ll learn vintage tunes in the mainland style for the standard (soprano) ukulele. Vintage tunes from the 1920s, when the uke reigned supreme in America, will be explored such as It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’, My Blue Heaven, I’ll See You In My Dreams and Shine On Harvest Moon. You’ll learn how to jam along to some blues tunes on this small but mighty instrument. Copies of many of the songs presented from vintage sheet music from the era with chord diagrams will be available. All songs will be presented in the now widely accepted C tuning for the ukulele G-C-E-A.
Born in Los Angeles, Annieville started playing piano at age 5. She went on to discover boogie woogie and blues piano, and her inspiration to learn more about these styles was sparked by collecting old recordings of legendary pianists, including Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis, Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, Otis Spann, and Professor Longhair, to name a few.
Thus began Annieville's thirst for knowledge and her continuing passion to play roots blues and boogie woogie music - a thirst we all share at the Festival.
We're honored to have the great Nat Reese on faculty this year for the Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival. Nat grew up in Virginia listening to his father's guitar and his mother's concertina. After showing some talent on his father's guitar, the family purchased a Martin Tiple 12-string.
Nat began to learn songs from itinerant black musicians who rode the rails throughout the mountain coal camps, company towns that were divided into “colored,” white, and Italian sections.
In 1939, Nat first
met and performed with multi-instrumentalist Howard Armstrong, who was
traveling through and playing the coal camp circuit from his home in Tennessee. The
duo performed together regularly until Armstrong’s death in 2003.
The Virginia Folklife Program produced an excellent video of Nat recording his "Save a Seat for Me" release- we hope that you enjoy it and that it encourages you to come out to Port Townsend to play with Nat.
