SEQUIM — It could get loud over there.
In Sequim this Saturday night, an unprecedented thing will take place: a rock concert presented by Destination Harley Davidson of Silverdale, at the band shell known as the James Center for the Performing Arts.
Foghat, the 44-year-old band famous for “Slow Ride,” “Fool for the City,” “Stone Blue” and “I Just Wanna Make Love to You,” will take the stage for a rain-or-shine show. After gates open at 6 p.m., the Seattle band Medicine Hat will open the concert at 7 p.m.
Then come the Foghat four: founding member Roger Earl on drums, bassist Craig MacGregor and guitarist Bryan Bassett, who have been with the band for decades, and singer Charlie Huhn, who came on board after cofounder Dave Peverett died 15 years ago.
Foghat plays about 60 dates a year at casinos, county fairs and outdoor venues such as the James Center. And Earl, who is 69, vows he will never retire.
“Why would I want to do that?” he asked in an interview from his home in Long Island, N.Y. Alongside his music, Earl has another venture he takes pleasure in: Foghat Cellars, a producer of wines using fruit from California’s Santa Barbara and Monterey counties.
“I get to do something I love to do . . . I refuse to lay down,” added Earl, who came to the United States in 1968 from his native England.
He grew up in West London, where his house had a tiny living room and a big grand piano. His father, a fan of Jerry Lee Lewis, played that instrument, so the young Earl took up the drums at age 13.
Tens of thousands of miles later, he still revels in the rhythms.
“Myself and the bass player,” he said, “are sort of laying down the road the singer and guitarist travel on.”
It was American blues that first fired him up. Earl was a young teenager in the United Kingdom when he heard players from Mississippi and Chicago. They sang about subjects he couldn’t quite understand at that age — “but I knew I loved it,” he writes on Foghat.net.
“I belonged to a record club and I remember the first time I saw Howlin’ Wolf’s name on a big list of records I could buy. ‘Howlin’ Wolf?’ I thought, ‘He has to be great with a name like that.’ And I wasn’t disappointed.”
Earl adds that he’s never shaken off his early influences; “the one thing you can’t ever forget is how to be a fan.”
In concert, Foghat has about 20 albums’ worth of songs from which to choose. They’re working on another to come out in mid-2016, Earl said. So he has a hearing aid. So he’s the sole surviving original Foghatter. This drummer is fond of quoting Peverett, whose motto was “We’re gonna roll till we’re old, gonna rock till we drop.”
