PORT TOWNSEND — If you want to play the blues, you shouldn’t think about it too much.
“The way to play the blues isn’t written down,” said Daryl Davis, artistic director of Centrum’s Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival & Workshop, which began July 29 and continued through Aug. 5.
“It depends on bringing your own interpretation to music, which is something that a lot of people have trouble getting their head around,” Davis explained.
About 230 musicians from all over the country carried their guitars, harmonicas and other instruments from one workshop class to another at Fort Worden State Park. They were learning the techniques and theory with which they can better express themselves within — or outside of — the loosely defined blues format.
Among the musicians in the workshops was a 9-year-old from Tucson, Ariz. — Roman Barten-Sherman — who is profiled along with his proud mother by Port Townsend-based independent multimedia journalist and videographer Jack Olmsted.
Roman has been attending the Centrum workshops since he was 7. He was busking on a bench in downtown Port Townsend as Olmsted interviewed his mother:
