SEQUIM — The Music Live with Lunch series, a concert and meal for anyone who would like a midday interlude, returns today with Dennis Blair, a singer whose repertoire ranges from country and folk to the Beatles.
Blair and his guitar will arrive for a noon performance today at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, 525 N. Fifth Ave., with a hot lunch served in the parish hall at 12:30 p.m.
Tickets are $10 at the door, and vegetarian meals are available.
Like all Music Live with Lunch entertainers, Blair donates his time, with lunch and camaraderie his payment.
His set list features “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” to “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” to “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” “That’s Amore,” “Yesterday,” “You Belong to Me” and “Till There Was You.”
When Blair was a boy, his mother required him to take piano lessons, but as it was 1964, that didn’t work. His only musical goal was to sound like John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison.
So by the time Blair was 12, he’d taught himself to play the guitar and abandoned the piano.
He still consoles his mom by reminding her that all the musical theory she made him learn has paid off in the long run.
Over the past four decades, Blair has sung in school choirs, dive bars, upscale restaurants, churches, the Sequim Relay for Life and even on a couple of cruise ships.
And since his 2011 retirement from the Department of the Army, where he did substance abuse treatment for the troops at Fort Riley, Kan., Blair’s musical life has come full circle.
When he was in his early teens, his mom would drive him and his drum-playing brother, Roger, to many of the nursing homes in their hometown of Erie, Pa.
The brothers would play for an hour and think they were really good, Blair remembers, adding, “the residents took pity on [us] and applauded.”
Nowadays, Blair circulates among the assisted living communities here on the North Olympic Peninsula, hoping he sounds a little bit better than he did all those years ago.
For more information about Blair’s Music Live with Lunch concert today, phone the St. Luke’s office, which is open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Thursday, at 360-683-4862.
