Charley Snellings, a beloved Eugene-based blues musician, passed away Nov. 12, 2025. A tribute concert will be held on August 19, featuring Paul Biondi, Robert Ruggiero and more showcasing blues and rock music to honor Snellings’ musical legacy. “Paul was a really good friend of Charley’s, and they played together a lot,” says Lisa Mowry Garland, Snellings’ longtime friend and ex-wife. Snellings played in various bands throughout his life, including a prominent Eugene band, Voodoo Chili, which gained peak popularity in the 1980s. Mowry Garland says Snellings started his musical career in Texas during the early 1960s where he picked up playing the guitar and singing. One of his inspirations was Stevie Ray Vaughan, the American guitarist and blues musician. In the ’60’s, Snellings played in a popular house band called the Cellar in Dallas with Vaughan’s older brother Jimmie Vaughan. “Jimmie’s little brother used to come in and ask if he could play with them. Jimmie and Charley went on tour with their band, and when they came back from tour they couldn’t get their job back because Jimmie’s little brother had gotten his own band together and taken over as a house band,” Mowry Garland says. Snellings was a banker for Columbia Bank, the president of Habitat for Humanity Lane County and a whitewater raft guide. Snellings published several novels — his most popular was The Hide Behind, a horror novel. In the years leading up to his death, he worked on an initiative with Biondi to start a fund to provide health care for musicians, named MEMA. “He did a lot of work with the community,” Mowry Garland says. “He used to do the reading programs where he would go out and read to little children.” Mowry Garland says that Snellings’ musical career was deeply entrenched in the community, and he used to headline the Blues and Brews fest, which is an annual event that hosts live blues music and local craft breweries, when it initially started and the Fourth of July celebration at Alton Baker Park. “He was a beautiful singer, when he sang ‘Amazing Grace,’ it would just make you cry,” Mowry Garland says. “We really miss, not only a great musician, but a really precious and special friend.”

Charley Snellings Tribute is 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm Wednesday August 19, Mac’s Restaurant 1626 Willamette Street Eugene. Free.