Lakota John with Special Guest Jontavious Willis
Education and Concert
Friday, April 17, 2020
7:30 PM

Lakota John and Jontavious Willis will be offering a 75-minute course covering Blues History, Piedmont region Blues Styles, artists and genre (Georgia and North Carolina) blues. Piedmont Blues is a type of blues music characterized by a fingerpicking approach on the guitar in which a regular, alternating thumb bass string rhythmic pattern supports a syncopated melody using the treble strings generally picked with the fore-finger, occasionally others. This class will include fingerpicking but will not exclusively be fingerpicking. The Concert is a lively, festive concert which always sends folks away with a big ole smile on their face.  

ROOTS / BLUES / RAGTIME / JAZZ

Lakota John blends traditional styles of the Roots, Blues, Ragtime, and Jazz with slide guitar, banjo, and mandolin. He adds in a bit of harmonica and mixes in part of his Indigenous heritage with sounds of the Native American flute. 

Lakota John: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8vTyJApEMM&t=811s

Jontavious Willis's Blue Metamorphosis was released in 2016 and garnered him rave reviews from such notable magazines as Living Blues and Blues & Rhythm. In 2018, the Blue Metamorphosis earned recognition by the Blues Foundation through its International Blues Challenge, where he was honored with the Best Self-Produced CD Award. Spectacular Class is the follow-up release album and earned Willis a Grammy Nomination for Best Traditional Blues Album of the Year. 

Jontavious Willis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci7aGH5gCUI