National Heritage Fellow John Dee Holeman, along with songster Michael Roach (pictured) and multi-instrumentalist Lighntin’ Wells, will present an evening of acoustic Piedmont blues at 7:30 pm on October 16 at Fort Worden State Park’s Joseph F. Wheeler Theater.

Tickets are $12 dollars; youth 18 and under can attend for free with advance registration. Tickets are available here or by calling Brown Paper Tickets at 1-800-838-3006. Tickets are also available at the box-office door beginning at 7 pm.  

Piedmont style guitar music is one of the earliest forms of blues guitar. The right thumb lays down the bass line, and fingers independently play the melody, chords, fills, and other treble voices—much the way ragtime pianists divided their right and left hands into different functions. The approach worked for Delta and country-ragtime blues as well, but reached it’s apex in the Piedmont style.

John Dee Holeman is a singer-guitarist from Durham, North Carolina, a tobacco town that has produced such talented and influential bluesmen as Blind Boy Fuller and Reverend Gary Davis. Holeman, who has been picking the guitar since the age of fourteen, is one of the last living links to these seminal musicians. He has a rich expressive voice and a guitar style that mixes the lilting melodic phrasing of Piedmont style with the more aggressive and hard driving influences from the Delta. Born in 1929 in Orange County, John Dee is a transitional player—he learned to play just as the electric guitar was replacing the acoustic as the favored instrument amongst blues musicians. He began picking guitar when he was 14, playing Piedmont standards learned from his uncle and cousin and from recordings of such area artists as Blind Boy Fuller. Raised on a farm, he made music primarily at house parties and community work-gatherings in the country.

“I'd sit around the barn, keeping the fire to cure the tobacco," he said. "For my entertainment—with this guitar, you know—I'd bang on it. I kept on doing that and picked up a few chords.” Holeman began playing publically at birthday celebrations, corn shuckings, wood choppings, and house parties.

Michael Roach, now living in England, sings and plays guitar in an East Coast style of blues that dates back to the 1920s. A lynchpin of the Washington, DC blues community in the late 1980s, he is a direct link in the Piedmont tradition, having spent many years learning directly from John Jackson, John Cephas, Archie Edwards, and Jerry Ricks. His repertoire draws from the rural music of the northern Piedmont where the black and white idioms meet—secular songs and ballads, blue and hokum, folk revival tunes, dance reels and church music of the eastern region.

Lightnin’ Wells, from Fountain, North Carolina, loves the music from the early part of the last century. He learned to play harmonica as a young child and taught himself to play the guitar as he developed a strong interest in traditional music. He has played his brand of Piedmont blues throughout North Carolina, the United States and Europe. Lightnin' remains an insatiable student and researcher, studying the various forms of American roots music from bygone eras. He plays a number of instruments besides the guitar including the harmonica, ukulele, mandolin and banjo.

Tickets are $12 dollars; youth 18 and under can attend for free with advance registration. Tickets are available here or by calling Brown Paper Tickets at 1-800-838-3006. Tickets are also available at the box-office door beginning at 7 pm.  

John Dee Holeman is the real deal.

Born in Orange County, North Carolina in 1929, John Dee has been playing the blues since he was 14. He learned by listening to Blind Boy Fuller's records as well as by playing with musicians who learned directly from Fuller.

John Dee was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship in 1988 and a North Carolina Folk Heritage Award in 1994. While we've presented him here in Port Townsend a few times at our summer festival, we have never brought him to work in a small, intimate setting before. 

We still have a couple of spaces left in our Piedmont Blues Intensive - taking place October 15-18. If you are a guitar player who wants to learn Piedmont fingerpicking from the source, you need to join John Dee, along with Michael Roach, and Lightnin' Wells for this gathering. It's a small gathering, and you'll get some seriously premium time with each of these great musicians.

We're minutes away from starting our Saturday afternoon mainstage show at the Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival.

Artistic Director Corey Harris has put together a great weekend of music, and it all kicked into high-gear last night during Blues in the Clubs. At the end of the post is a video of one of Friday's club venues. After our afternoon and evening mainstage shows today (tickets now available at the gate), we return to the clubs once more - both downtown and at Fort Worden State Park.

We have an informal blues shuttle running tonight starting at 9pm between the Fort (building 204) and downtown so that you can see it all - club tickets are available at the mainstage concerts, or at the door of each club.

Here we are folks. It's Friday, July 31, and for the next 48 hours, it is blues day and night at the Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival!

• Friday: free blues performance at 12n at Fort Worden Commons
• Friday: blues club shows downtown and Fort Worden from 9pm-12am
• Saturday: mainstage shows at McCurdy Pavilion at 1:30pm and 7:30pm
• Saturday: blues club shows downtown and Fort Worden from 9pm-12am

Here is a video montage from last year's Festival giving you a taste of the action. See you at the shows!

2008 Port Townsend Country Blues Festival Performances

Online and phone sales (800-838-3006) for the Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival will continue through Friday morning at 9am.

After that, all remaining tickets will be sold at the McCurdy Pavilion Box Office, which will open for sales 90 minutes before each show. (Blues in the Clubs tickets may be purchased at each club door during the Festival.)

If Saturday afternoon's reserved seating sells out, we will offer lawn seating.

This Wednesday, July 29, at 7:30 pm at Littlefield Green, the Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival is offering the public the chance to enjoy Phil Wiggins's famous marinade and rub. Chicken, ribs, fish, green salad--it all happens on what promises to be another beautiful day in Port Townsend. Wiggins and Kenny "Blues Boss" Wayne will also be leading a outdoor public dance. Admission to everything happening on the lawn is $15, the gates open at 7 pm!

We're within days of the start of the Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival. To help you prepare for a great week (or weekend) of blues, here is a collection of links to help you get into a "blues" frame of mind.

• Artistic Director Corey Harris talks about his vision for the week (recorded at last year's festival).
• Directions on how to get to Fort Worden
• Complete artist listing for the Festival
• Concert and Club schedules
• Audio Podcasts of Corey Harris discussing the 2009 Festival
• Video Roundup of 2008 Festival

With the success of our Cajun & Swing Dance earlier in the month, we are moving our July 29 Blues BBQ & Dance featuring a double bill of John Dee Holeman & Phil Wiggins, and Kenny “Blues Boss” Wayne with Faculty All-Stars to Littlefield Green! 

Plenty of room to dance and enjoy a beautiful July evening. If you wish to sit, bring a blanket or low back chair.  Bring a picnic or enjoy free Down Home BBQ while it lasts. Tickets on sale now! (In case of rain, this event will be moved to McCurdy Pavilion.)

The Blues BBQ & Dance is part of Centrum's Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival. Visit our Festival performance page for complete information, and tickets.