PORT TOWNSEND — Centrum’s Acoustic Blues is happening at Fort Worden this week, with opportunities this weekend for the public to catch members of faculty in action.
“Acoustic Blues week is the highlight of my year,” Artistic Director Jontavious Willis said. “Really kind of gets me going to keep me going for the rest of the year. It has been that way ever since I came here.”
Willis has been the artistic director since 2021 and started coming to the Port Townsend campus as faculty in 2018.
“We do some great cultural preservation and some moving it forward with the culture too,” Willis said.
The program, which started Monday and runs till Sunday, is a week of workshops, performances, jams and community.
“I think the core of (blues) is just community,” Willis said.
Willis, a Grammy-nominated blues musician, has pulled together a community of artist faculty from his background in music. Forty to 50 percent of the faculty are repeat members, Willis said.
He plays often with Chicago-based, Brazilian-born bassist Rodrigo Mantovani. Willis plays often with Ethan Leinwand as well.
“He plays good ol’, good-time piano,” Willis said.
Willis chose Lloyd Buchanan, who told him about Chris Wallace.
“They from my region of Georgia, West Georgia,” Willis said. “They doin’ the gospel class. They got like 80 or 90 people in there. I met Lloyd just because I heard people talking about him on the church scene back home. I met him before too at a venue, he’s a home boy.”
Willis said he’s played with harmonica player Andrew Alli since his first time as faculty at a music camp in West Virginia, in 2017. He met guitarist Alvin Youngblood Hart while opening for Taj Mahal, he said.
In addition to his connections with the faculty, Willis said that he’s thinking through who is social, who is a good teacher, who is good in a group jam and who’s knowledgeable.
All of the classes have some element of history in them, but some of them focus on history, he said.
Willis’ class this year is focusing on participants building a song from the ground up.
“You pick a key, you pick a topic that’s gonna influence your song, and you pick a form,” Willis said. “One fella got Elmore James ragtime in F sharp. He gotta make an Elmore James song. It’s about pain. He said he’s going to take his guitar and tune it to open G but tune down half a step.”
Many classes will focus on specific instrument techniques, but there are also jam classes and dance classes.
Blues is a guitar-dominated world, Willis said, but players of other instruments attend.
“There’s a lot of people that play different instruments around here,” Willis said. “So that’s another thing you see. You got a teacher that might be teaching one thing, but they can still get you from the perspective of another instrument.”
Following guitar, harmonica and piano are the most common instruments, Willis said.
Conrad Cayman is teaching blues ukulele, which will include instruction on improvisation and soloing.
Acoustic Blues lists mandolin, violin, bass, banjo, washboard, voice and accordion.
In addition to the week of programming for the workshop’s attendees, several public opportunities to see Willis and this year’s cohort of decorated artist faculty are set for this weekend.
On Friday and Saturday nights, from 7:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., artists will play in a number of configurations across three Fort Worden locations: The Commons at 210 Battery Way and the Up North and Up South rooms on the second floor of Centrum’s 204 building, 223 Battery Way.
Tickets for Friday and Saturday night cost $30. Friday night tickets and can be purchased at ttps://tinyurl.com/58w9v62x, while Saturday night tickets can be purchased at https://tinyurl.com/5n8p8ju8.
On Saturday at 1:30 p.m. at the McCurdy Pavilion, 200 Battery Way, the Acoustic Blues Showcase lists 24 performers from faculty.
Showcase tickets can be purchased at https://tinyurl.com/bhdpy89d from $27 to $50.
Tickets for all Acoustic Blues events are free to youth.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com.
