Piedmont Style Blues Guitar Workshop with Andy Cohen

$20 at the door (or $35 for both the workshop and the Cohen, Ellis and Ellis house concert) Reservations required: HouseConcerts@fssgb.org

Andy Cohen is a virtuoso finger-style guitarist who has been described as “a walking, talking folk-blues-roots music encyclopedia.” He grew up in a home with a piano and lots of Dixieland Jazz records. During the Sixties Folk Revival, he got hooked on the music of Big Bill Broonzy and the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. When Andy was 16, he heard South Carolina’s Rev. Gary Davis perform and the effect on him was profound. He has devoted his life to studying, performing, and promoting traditional blues and folk music of the pre-World War II era. Andy has toured solo, as well as with Martin, Bogan and Armstrong, John Jackson, Rev. Gary Davis, Brother Daniel Womack, Rev. Dan Smith, Jim Brewer, and Honeyboy Edwards. He also worked extensively with Walt and Ethel Phelps, Big Joe Duskin, Pigmeat Jarrett, Etta Baker, Big Boy Henry, and James “Son” Thomas.

In the workshop, we will be going over a number of straightforward songs in the key of C: Freight Train, Louis Collins, Come Let Us March, Gary Davis’s Candy Man, and if we get that far, I will teach Davis’s Buck Dance, which is a little more complex than the others. You’ll learn how to keep your thumb going, count while playing, And learn how to play a scale in major and minor sixths.