Tickets: $15 in advance, $20 at the door.

Sorry, this show is completely sold out!  No tickets will be released at the door.

Johnson, Miller,& Dermody have played together for over a decade and have been one of the Pacific Northwest’s best-kept secrets until now. All three have busy solo careers but have found time to gather together to play this rootsy, bluesy, soulful music that they love. Finally they sat down at David Lange’s studio and played the music found on Deceiving Blues all together in the same room, in real time, no headphones, no studio gimmicks, and no attempts to fix things later. Honest, immediate, heartfelt and real, in the tradition of the artists and music that inspired them.

They first played as a trio when all three were on staff at the Centrum Blues Workshop in Port Townsend, WA. They are known among aficionados of country blues as three of the finest teachers as well as players. With the release of this CD the rest of the world should soon find out what a select group already knows…these artists are three of the finest interpreters and creators of acoustic blues working today.

Orville Johnson was born and raised in the southern Illinois heartland. He acquired his love of singing as a youth in the fundamentalist Pentecostal church he attended and, when he later began playing guitar and dobro, responded to the roots music that surrounded him by learning to play the blues, bluegrass, rockabilly, and country music that are all part of the mosaic that characterizes his own mongrel music.

He is a singer, instrumentalist, record producer, songwriter, session player, teacher, and, above all, an instinctive and sensitive musician. As his entry in the Encyclopedia of Northwest Music (Sasquatch Press 1999) states, he has become a vital figure on the NW music scene in the twenty-some years he’s lived there, appearing on over 200 CDs, movie and video soundtracks (most recently the film “The Wooly Boys” with Peter Fonda and the PBS series “Frontier House”), commercials, producing 15 CDs for other artists, hosting a roots music radio show, and appearing in the 1997 film Georgia with Jennifer Jason-Leigh and Mare Winningham, on the Prairie Home Companion radio show and on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show.

Orville is also known as a patient and insightful teacher of music and has taught often at the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop as well as the International Guitar Seminar, Pt. Townsend Blues Workshop, Sound Acoustic Music Camp, Greater Yellowstone Music Camp, B.C. Bluegrass Workshop and others. He has several instructional DVDs and CDs of his own music available including Blueprint for the Blues, Slide & Joy, Freehand, and others.

John Miller has enjoyed a varied career as a professional guitarist, composer and teacher since he started 35 years ago.  John recorded five solo albums while still in his twenties, focusing first of all on country blues in his releases on Blue Goose records, First Degree Blues, How About Me, and Let’s Go Riding, and transitioning to jazz standards for Safe Sweet Home and Biding My Time, a collection of George Gershwin songs, both released on Rounder Records.

John has a reputation as an excellent teacher, having founded two music camps and produced 6 instructional DVDs on country blues guitar for Stefan Grossman’s Vestapol Videos, focusing on the music of Mississippi John Hurt, Elizabeth Cotten, Robert Wilkins, Furry Lewis and Bo Carter.

In recent years, John has recorded collaborative CDs with the acoustic jazz trio, Catwalk, the French cabaret ensemble, Rouge, and in duos with vocalist Rebecca Kilgore, mandolinist John Reischman and violinist Ruthie Dornfeld. John recently released his first solo recording in twenty-five years, Hey There, which is a collection of jazz standards.

Grant Dermody (pronounced DER muh dee) is a harmonica player and singer known for his rich tone, tasteful solos, and solid rhythmic playing. Grant moves through a variety of musical styles while maintaining his own distinctive sound.

A sought after accompanist, Grant has appeared on several Jim Page recordings, plays on Dan Crary’s new album, Renaissance of the Steel String Guitar; and has also recorded with Robin Dale Ford, Scott Law, MichaelGrey (of Pearl Django) and Michael Gettel. Grant has performed with Cephas & Wiggins, Big Joe Duskin, JohnDee Holeman, Robert Lowrey, and Honeyboy Edwards. He was a featured artist with Orchestra Seattle playing the harmonica part in Huntley Beyer’s Symphony, Romantic Lines. He is a member of the blues influenced old-time band, The Improbabillies, whose self-titled CD on the Yodel-A-Hee label is a fine example of Grant’s innovative playing and recently released his first solo CD, Crossing That River.

Grant teaches harmonica at the annual Port Townsend Country Blues Festival and at The Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins , West Virginia.

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Mark Graham and Orville Johnson love the magic when they play together as much as their audiences do. “People comment on that all the time,” says Orville. “They can tell we’re having a good time up there. We play on a lot of different emotions.”

Wry humor, virtuoso harmonica, soulful blues, hot pickin’ and sweet country vocals – that’s what you get when Orville and Mark combine forces as the Kings of Mongrel Folk.

Graham’s harmonica virtuosity on Irish and American fiddle tunes and his rich, woody sound on clarinet are well-known to fans of Kevin Burke’s Open House. Graham’s sardonic skewering of contemporary life, in such songs as “I Can See Your Aura and It’s Ugly” and “Zen Gospel Singing” have been cult classics for years. His songs have been recorded by many, including the Austin Lounge Lizards, Bryan Bowers, and the Limelighters.

Orville Johnson, an instrumental gunslinger whom the Seattle Times describes as “player’s player,” has a gift of finding the “secret ingredient” that makes a song sound letter-perfect, whether it’s an R & B tune from New Orleans, a country blues or a jazzy ballad. Orville’s guitar, dobro, and quavering, honeyed vocals have seasoned more than two hundred recordings, soundtracks and countless TV and radio commercials. He also produces records and teaches at events like the International Guitar Seminar and Pt. Townsend Country Blues Workshop. He has shared the stage with artists such as Doc Watson, Bonnie Raitt and John Lee Hooker.

Between the two of them, they have played many of the most coveted gigs in North America and Europe: the Newport Folk Festival and Caffe Lena, out East; South by Southwest, in Texas; the Bay area’s Freight and Salvage and Kuumbwa; London’s Festival Hall and Glasgow’s Celtic Connections Festival, in Europe;and on their home turf, Bumbershoot and the NW Folklife Festival. Though they were longtime acquaintances on the Northwest folk scene, it was at a Folklife Festival jam session in 1991 that they hatched their plan to expand their kingdom of mongrel folk nationwide and, yes, even worldwide. Wherever they go, their performances and recordings have inspired raves:

“Performed with taste and skill and boosted by the nuttiness of Graham’s songs”  - Sing Out

“Great songwriting, singing and playing” - Dirty Linen

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In 2009, producer and musician Scott Schaffer brought together seven mandolin players from across the United States to create a record of creative mandolin music.  The resulting project, called Mandomorphosis, is a genre-spanning tour through jazz, bluegrass, folk, and free-spirited improvisation.  Please join us for the project’s West Coast CD release of its debut album, 2010.

In attendance will be the Western component of the Mandomorphosis project: Orville Johnson, Matt Sircely, Michael Connolly and Scott Schaffer.  Expect a high-energy evening of improvised instrumental music focused on mandolin, but also featuring dobro, fiddle, tenor guitar, and more!

“Intricate… energetic… intriguing… brilliant… I highly recommend 2010 for its varied musical styles and approaches, creativity and overall sound.  4 Stars (out of 5)”

-Wildy Haskell, Wildy’s World (Nov 16, 2009)

“These cats rock right in the pocket. Progressive bluegrass ala the Bela Fleck ilk with energy and good vibes for all that just keep coming… This is certainly a winner for adult ears on the prowl for something new and different… Hot stuff that just doesn’t wear out its welcome.”

-Chris Spector, Midwest Record (Nov 13, 2009)

The Players

Orville Johnson was born in 1953 in Edwardsville, Illinois and came up on the St. Louis, Missouri music scene, where he was exposed to and participated in a variety of blues, bluegrass and American roots music. He began singing in his Pentecostal church as a young boy, in rock bands in middle school, then took up the guitar at 17,with early influences from Doc Watson, Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, and Chuck Berry. In the early 1970′s, Orville spent several seasons playing bluegrass on the SS Julia Belle Swain, a period-piece Mississippi river steamboat plying the inland waterways, with his group the Steamboat Ramblers.

Johnson, known for his dobro and slide guitar stylings and vocal acrobatics, has played on over 100 albums. He has appeared on Garrison Keilor’s Prairie Home Companion, Jay Leno’s Tonight Show and was featured in the 1997 film Georgia with Mare Winningham. His musical expertise can also be heard on the Microsoft CD-ROMs Musical Instruments of the World and the Complete Encyclopedia of Baseball. He teaches as well at the International Guitar Seminar, Pt. Townsend Country Blues Week and Puget Sound Guitar Workshop.

Johnson released 4 recordings in the 1990′s: The World According to Orville (1990) Blueprint for the Blues (1998) Slide & Joy (1999) an all-instrumental dobro tour de force and Kings of Mongrel Folk (1997) with Mark Graham. He also appeared on 4 discs with the File’ Gumbo Zydeco Band and produced Whose World Is This (1997) for Jim Page and Inner Life (1999) for Mark Graham. In the 21st century, he has released Freehand, a new Kings of Mongrel Folk disc, Still Goin’ Strong, and been featured in the soundtracks of PBS’ Frontier House and the Peter Fonda flick The Wooly Boys as well as the compilation CD Legends of the Incredible Lap Steel Guitar.

Matt Sircely is a creative mandolinist, songwriter and independent journalist living in Port Townsend, Washington. Sircely improvises fluently, composes prolifically and is familiar with a diversity of musical traditions.

At the age of 32, versatility with the mandolin has earned Matt Sircely gigs and guest appearances with some of the finest acoustic musicians on the continent. In late 2008, Sircely performed in the debut of bass legend Buell Neidlinger’s Prairie Ramblers in Washington State, and recorded electric mandolin with Kelley Breidling’s classic country group Kelley and the Cowboys in a session produced by Joel Savoy in Louisiana, featuring an all-star lineup from around the country.

In 2000, he joined Hot Club Sandwich, a young band of creative individuals who shared a love of Django Reinhardt’s music and the Gypsy jazz it spawned. Operating as a collective, Hot Club Sandwich also incorporates other influences that members bring into the mix, including Latin American folkloric traditions. Within two years, the group was performing at some of the early Gypsy jazz festivals to appear on the West Coast.

In 2005, David Grisman asked him to compile the liner notes for his Tone Poets project, a historic assembly of 42 musicians, each playing Grisman’s mandolin or guitar. In the same year, Sircely began contributing to the Fretboard Journal and Strings, finding deep inspiration in researching the lives and work of some his musical heroes like Wade Mainer, Andy Statman and Juan Reynoso.

In 2008, Sircely contributed an original composition to Galen Garwood’s short film Ed & Ed, which first appeared at the Port Townsend Film Festival. Two of his compositions, written to accompany the poetry of the beloved James Broughton, were included in ‘Letters from James,’ a film by Garwood and Rowan James which was the first film to appear at the first PTFF. Entering into 2009, Sircely is continuing to hone his solo material in anticipation of his first solo release.

Scott Schaffer’s 30-year career in music defines eclecticism.  He has played bass, guitar, mandolin and a variety of other instruments in bands and genres ranging from jazz, to punk rock, to traditional folk, to experimental music.  He has produced a dozen CDs and two movie soundtracks, and specializes in bringing together musicians of different backgrounds to a common purpose.  In this vein, his most recent project is MandoMorphosis, a creative collaboration of seven mandolinists.

Through the 1990s, Scott co-led quirky and undefinable Pennsylvania-based string band Bala Hounds.  He later produced three critically acclaimed records as a member of improvisational group Edge City Collective.  More recently, he recorded a soundtrack of original music for the feature film Port of Angels, which premiered at the 2009 Idaho Film Festival.