Centrum, the arts non-profit based out of Port Townsend, WA, has been getting great press recently, and deservedly so. They've been putting on some of the most inspiring and ground-breaking programs in American roots music for a couple decades now, and it's about time people started to notice. This week, they're running their Acoustic Blues Festival (none other than Taj Mahal is headlining), and I thought it was the perfect time to run a CD review that I've been meaning to write for a while now.

Lauren Sheehan's Northwest Roots Music Vision

Lauren Sheehan. Rose City Ramble.
2011. Wilson River Records.

Lauren Sheehan’s been a fixture in the Northwest’s acoustic roots music scene for a while now, but with her new album, Rose City Ramble, she may just be turning in her finest work to date. She’s always wandered back and forth over the line between old-time and country blues, a great ground to cover, in my opinion. The opening track of her album, “The Memory of Your Smile,” is a classic Stanley Bros song re-made into a slow country taildragger, and is followed closely by "Dirty Rat Swing," a country blues honky-tonk number. Blues and country hold hands and go strolling down a summer path on Sheehan's album, and boy does it sound great!

Each track on the album is a new and different adventure. It’s an exciting album to listen to in this way; you keep discovering something new. This diversity comes from Sheehan’s easy master of American folk traditions. She can sing a powerful acoustic Appalachian ballad just as easily as a rompin’ old blues number, and even toss in some heavenly bluegrass harmony. There’s a couple of tracks she just nails; knocks out of the park. “Black is the Color” is a sublime version of the old song, influenced, as Lauren says, by a little Lightnin’ Hopkins. Her voice is so beautiful on this track, I’d heartily recommend it to anyone. “A Satisfied Mind” is a great song made popular by country star Porter Wagoner. I first heard it from Caleb Klauder, another Portland musician, who killed it on his album Western Country. Here, Sheehan brings in a slower, more thoughtful vision of the lyrics and gives it new life. But throughout, she’s a product of the Pacific Northwest. On "Chilly Waters", she brings new words, "celebrating the free-range goddess in every woman", to the classic ballad "Cold Rain and Snow." In addition, the sidemen (and women) on her album mostly hail from around the Portland area. And what players! There's solid playing on every track to back up Lauren's singing and guitar/mandolin work. She also recorded and produced the album with influential folk audiologists Billy Oskay of Big Red Studio and Alan Garren of Waltzing Bear Audio, both of whom were involved in seminal recordings from the great Portland old-time ensemble Foghorn Stringband.

Lauren Sheehan: Black is the Color


Lauren Sheehan: I Want Jesus to Walk With Me

Lauren will be performing at Centrum's Acoustic Blues Festival on Friday, August 5 at the Public House in Port Townsend with one of my favorite roots musicians: Mark Graham. MMmmmm, good show!

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS FROM CENTRUM'S ACOUSTIC BLUES FEST
(Check out the full list of performances HERE)

Jerron 'Blind Boy' Paxton (Watts, CA)

We've written about Jerron before. He's a simply amazing young roots musician. A walking encyclopedia of early American music, he knows the traditions inside and out and loves to play with them. We're HUGE fans of his work.

BLIND BOY PAXTON - Nordstrom, Seattle from More Dust Than Digital on Vimeo.

Jerron will play right after Lauren Sheehan at the Public House on Friday, August 5.

Nat Reese  (Princeton, West Virginia)

A coal miner by trade, Nat Reese comes from a Virginia family and grew up around all kinds of musical styles. But he learned the blues from itinerant black musicians who traveled through Appalachia working the "coal camp circuit" in the mid-1900s. I'm intrigued by this circuit, and what must have been a hard-traveling, hard-living life for a musician in the South.

Learn More about Nat Reese

 

Nat Reese will play the big Saturday concert on August 6 at McCurdy Pavilion.

Erwin Helfer  (Chicago, Illinois)

Who doesn't love boogie-woogie piano playing? It's just a sheer joy to listen to. Pianist Erwin Helfer has been playing and innovating in the boogie-woogie style for decades, and will likely give a performance that will be one of the highlights of the festival.

Erwin will play the big Saturday concert on August 6 at McCurdy Pavilion.

FULL LINEUP AND SCHEDULE