Press release from The Flood Gallery:
The Flood Gallery located at 850 Blue Ridge Rd, in Black Mountain, NC will be hosting a workshop and concert with Andy Cohen. On Wednesday, May 8th- The Legendary Blues Guitarist Andy Cohen with special guest, Ash Devine, a donation based concert will be presented form 7pm to 9pm.
The workshop on Tuesday, May 7th is an Intermediate/Advanced Piedmont blues guitar workshop with award-winning musician Andy Cohen. It is from 5:30pm-7:30pm $20 per person . Pre-register by emailing bookashdevine@gmail.com, limited spaces are available.
Andy Cohen is a performer, picker, organizer, educator, blues researcher, and he’s a road warrior now, at seventy-two, since even though it doesn’t pay very well, it beats workin’.
Cohen is a virtuoso finger-style blues guitarist, mainly of Piedmont style blues, but other things (Irish harp tunes, Old Time stuff, contemporary material and even a few of his own songs) as well. A student of Rev. Gary Davis’s music, he applies those techniques to other material, including some of his own compositions. Along the way, he’s washed dishes, organized folk festivals, worked construction, made twenty or so full-length vinyl’s, cassettes, CDs and even a few cylinders.
Cohen has more than a dozen recordings to his credit, including Oh Glory, How Happy I Am: The Sacred Songs of Rev. Gary Davis and Andrew M. Cohen: Dolceola Favorites. An enthusiastic proponent of the dolceola, Andy says he “never leaves home without it.” Described by some as a “miniature piano,” the dolceola has a keyboard, but the strings are struck with wooden mallets . Along the way, Andy earned a Master’s Degree in anthropology. His passions come together in his essay on “The Hands of Blues Guitarists,” published in Ramblin’ On My Mind: New Perspectives On the Blues, edited by David Evans (2 0 08). At an Andy Cohen concert, expect to hear blues rooted in Mississippi, the Piedmont, Memphis, and Chicago, as well as some ragtime, gospel, and original tunes. In 2011 Andy received the Eisteddfod Award from The Eisteddfod Traditional Music Festival. Festival Director Dr. Jerome Epstein said, “We decided to give the award to Andy, one of this year’s performers, because of his outstanding contributions to the field of traditional music, as performer, collector, and advocate.” In 2012 Andy received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the California Autoharp Gathering.
Ash Devine is an original singer-songwriter, a traditional Appalachian folk- musician, a social activist for multi-generational audiences, and an educator based in Asheville, North Carolina. In summer 2015, Ash Devine blew audiences away with her finger picking Carter scratch style when she starred as legendary country stars Maybelle Carter of the Carter Family in the Parkway Playhouse production of “Esley: The Life and Music of Leslie Riddle”. Devine has released two albums of original music. Her work as an artist is inspired by her travels with activist Patch Adams and her studies with traditional music legends such as Sheila Kay Adams, and Andy Cohen.
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