Experience these blues and fingerstyle guitar masters ahead of their week of instruction at Menucha Retreat for Blues in the Gorge.
Alvin Youngblood Hart
The cosmic American love child of Howlin Wolf and Link Wray! Known as a “musician’s musician,” Alvin Youngblood Hart’s praises have been sung by everyone from Bob Dylan to Brit guitar gods Eric Clapton & Mick Taylor.
A devout follower of the “no barriers” approach carved out by veteran performers like Gatemouth Brown and the late/great Doug Sahm, Hart aims to delight the masses and points to challenge the so-called blues purists.
Vance Gilbert
Vance was born and raised in the Philadelphia area. Starting out hoping to be an R&B and jazz singer once at college, there he discovered his affinity for the storytelling sensibilities of the acoustic singer-songwriter thing. Word spread like wildfire about Gilbert’s stage-owning singing and playing, and Shawn Colvin invited him to be special guest on her 1992 Fat City tour where he took much of America by storm and by surprise.
30+ years into his career, the songwriter’s influence can be felt all over the contemporary Folk and Americana realm as he has helped pave the way for many of the BIPOC artists who have followed.
Bill Kirchen
From performing with his Who Knows Pickers jug band in Ann Arbor High School’s senior talent show (also on the program: the future Iggy Pop), to birthing the Americana genre with the original “hippie country band,” Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen, this affable Austinite has been everywhere, man, flying alongside some of the planet’s coolest cats — including the Jesus of Cool, Nick Lowe, and Lowe’s old protégé, Elvis Costello.
Mary Flower
Mary Flower is a brilliant fingerpicking guitarist in the roots blues/ragtime/early jazz tradition. She is a prodigious talent whose seasoned skills earned her the Far West Folk Alliance “Best of the West” award in 2025. She was inducted into the CO.Music Hall of Fame in 2019 for her work with The Mother Folkers.She is a long-time teacher who recently celebrated twelve years of “Blues in the Gorge,” her own guitar intensive. She’s made fourteen recordings that document her profound command and love for blues guitar. It’s entirely appropriate that Jorma Kaukonen called her “a national treasure in your own backyard.”
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