PORT TOWNSEND — Seattle singer, songwriter Jim Page will perform at The Palindrome at Eaglemount Cidery at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
Tickets for the concert at 1893 S. Jacob Miller Road are $20 online at https://www.ticketstorm.com/event/jimpage/palindromeport townsendeventcenter/port townsend/28216/ or $25 at the door.
Page has made 24 full-length albums, been on a dozen compilations, done a variety of tours, and written hundreds of songs, organizers said.
Some of them have been covered by Christy Moore, Dick Gaughan, Roy Bailey, The Doobie Brothers and Michael Hedges.
He’s toured with Dick Gaughan, Planxty, Leftover Salmon and Rob Wasserman. He’s shared the stage with Bonnie Raitt, Donal Lunny, Barry Melton, Robert Hunter and Björn Afzelius.
“He sings of politics and romance, adventure and comedy, tragedy, history, and meditations on life, death and the absurd,” organizers said. “His improvisations are legendary, and if there’s anything to talk about that he hasn’t sung about it’s just that he was too busy singing about something else.”
Background
Page was born in the lower Bay Area of California, growing into the 1960s, when all the arts were mixed together, the music, the theater, the poetry and politics.
His early influences were such country blues singers as Lightnin’ Hopkins and Blind Willie McTell, then singer songwriters like Buffy Sainte Marie and the young Bob Dylan.
When he was 20, he hitched across country to New York City and Greenwich Village, where he played for a year until he went to Seattle.
“Carrying his guitar like a sack of tools he left his mark on every square inch of that town,” organizers said. “Every theater, cafe, rock and roll bar, and sidewalk street corner was a stage, until a cop came by to shut him down. But he wouldn’t shut so easy.”
In 1974, he sang to the Seattle City Council that street music should be free and legal and they should overturn an old law against it and they did.
“Because of him, musicians have the right to play on Seattle’s sidewalks,” said Seattle Metropolitan Magazine.
Said Bonnie Raitt: “Jim has been writing great topical songs for as long as I can remember, bringing his acute wit and wry humor to a host of subjects that can really use both. In the tradition of Woody and Dylan, he cuts right to the heart with music you actually enjoy listening to. I’m a longtime admirer.”
