How a Pete Seeger Clone found the Blues

Walker T Ryan is a Eugene blues, folk and Americana music staple who is nearing the conclusion of his six-show residency at the Houndstooth Public House. His residency travels through his entire musical history, where, over the course of his shows, he’s illustrated his life with the music that got him here. In adopting musical traditions from Chicago blues, his penultimate show Sept. 20 is called The Kid Goes Electric (Sorta). He says that it will “pick up where I left off” from show three, his Delta blues show, and he’ll dive into when he discovered his favorite music: Chicago blues, with music from Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. Over the course of a two-hour show with two sets, Ryan will perform and tell stories about his favorite music of the era, while illustrating the overlying purpose for his residency. He says that in performing this music, he is “pointing out to people that Black people created the blues and it wasn’t a bunch of white guys,” he says. Over the course of his previous four shows, he’s told stories and performed music spanning decades back, including when he was “literally a Pete Seeger clone” as a teenager in the 1960s New York Greenwich Village folk scene. He’s gone even further into the past, with the third show covering when he was a child hearing old Delta blues for the first time. “Most people came to the blues through the Rolling Stones and people like that. That’s where they discovered that music,” he says. “I came to folk music listening to the old acoustic blues players.” The show after this one is on Oct. 18 and will be the last of his residency. To celebrate his final show, he’ll invite Tanya Bunson and Jeremy Wegner — the other two members of his band, The Walker T Ryan Trio — to perform with him. “It’s going to be a party,” he says.

Walker T Ryan’s The Kid Goes Electric (Sorta) 5th residency performance is 7 pm, Saturday, Sept. 20 at The Houndstooth Public House, 1795 West 6th Avenue. Free. His sixth residency performance is with The Walker T Ryan Trio and is 7 pm on Saturday, Oct. 18. Free.

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