The next instalment of the Home Routes Concert will feature the finely tuned finger-style of Andy Cohen, a blues, folk and roots guitarist from the deep south of Memphis, Tennessee.
The Home Routes format tends to lend itself to organic folk and country, whether due to the aesthetic of the event, or more practical limitations (a living room is hardly the place for a large amplified set-up). But while the performers that have visited Thompson with the tour this year have had a distinctly contemporary polish, Cohen approaches with a distinctly more traditional set. Growing up through the ’60s folk revival in Massachusetts, Cohen wasn’t taken by the rock which began to subsume folk in mainstream American music as the decade drew to a close. Rather, he followed the tide back down south, where he met and toured with several southern blues greats, including the late Rev. Gary Davis. Cohen’s set, “a sort of Country Blues 101.”
Cohen is as much of an advocate and an educator in the world of folk and blues as he is a musician, and has been described as a “walking, talking folk-blues-roots music encyclopedia:” along with his extensive personal experiences in southern music, Cohen earned a masters degree in anthropology, establishing him as both a well-worn traveller and a learned scholar of the blues. Among the fruits of his studies is his academic paper “The Hands of Blues Guitarists,” featured in 2008’s On My Mind: New Perspectives on the Blues, where he describes regional differences in playing styles which arise from the preferred hand positions of African-American blues guitarists in pre-Second World War U.S.A.
Cohen has also toured as an instructor as well as a musician, having hosted classes and workshops at several festivals, and served as the Folk Alliance Director of Traditional Studies and Resident Folklore. Cohen’s advocacy has been recognized both in receiving the Eisteddfod Award at the Eisteddfod Traditional Music Festival, and in 2012 when he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the California Autoharp Gathering.
Cohen isn’t just a guitar player, either: along with the piano and the autoharp, Cohen often carries with him the less-known dolceola, which he describes as a “Schroeder-sized grand piano.” Small keys trigger wooden mallets which strike against open strings much like a piano, amplified by a resonating chamber far more akin to a guitar.
The concert will be hosted at 42 Wekusko St. at 7:30pm. Tickets are $20 at the door.
