Portland 2017-

The entire time I was living in New York I was involved romantically with a wonderful woman in Portland, Oregon. We did a great job of maintaining a strong relationship long distance, but that couldn’t go on indefinitely. Providentially, Ralph Lauren laid me off, along everyone else on their web development team, in April of 2017 and gave me a very generous exit package. I moved to Portland three weeks later.

I couldn’t be happier. I’m concentrating full time on music and writing these days. My mother and my sister both live nearby in Vancouver, Washington, and my brother and many other family members live within striking distance in Washington State. My two sons and I are all on the West Coast for the first time in eleven years. Portland is a great city with a vibrant culture. Like most cities in the U.S., Portland has a shortage of live music venues, but the city has a really strong musical community that includes harmonica wizard Mitch Kashmar and the best blue-eyed soul singer in the land, Curtis Salgado—who is also a genius on that mouth organ. Portland is also home to the Waterfront Blues Festival—the largest such festival on the West Coast.

Two years ago I began gigging with The Perfect Gentlemen, an all-star contingent if there ever was one. Whit Draper and Alan Hager make for an unbeatable two-guitar blend, and the rhythm section of bassist Albert Reda and drummer Jeffrey Strawberry is so outstanding that it’s ridiculous. The pandemic has out us on temporary hiatus, but I’m trying to make best use of my time by working on my music and on my upcoming book, The Blues Dream of Billy Boy Arnold.

And I married that wonderful woman this summer.

I am VERY happy to be back in my native Pacific Northwest again.

Me with Franck Goldwasser at Portland’s Waterfront Blues Festival

A month before I moved to Portland, James Cotton died at his home in Austin, Texas. As I’ve noted, James was the artist who inspired me to pick up the harmonica, and so his passing was a real blow. I was invited to a memorial service for James in Austin a few months later—an amazing honor. This was the first time I had been back to Austin since the late ‘70s, and it was fascinating to see how that city had been completely transformed. Antone’s—now in its third location—is still going strong, and I caught some great blues shows while I was there, got to sit in with Paul Oscher at his weekly gig at C Boy’s, and got to catch up with some of my favorite people. Like I said several pages ago, the best and most impactful gift from all my time playing music has been the people I have met and spent time with, and I certainly felt that in spades down in Austin.

Barbecue at Antone's with a table full of harmonica royalty after James Cotton's memorial in Austin, Texas: (left to right) Annie Raines, Paul Oscher, Rick Estrin, Kyle Rowland, Kim Wilson, me, and Bob Corritore. (Photo by Bob Margolin)