M usician of many genres, multi-instrumentalist, singer of songs, teacher, workshop leader, scholar and humorist, Andy Cohen has been playing one kind of old time music or another since he was barely tall enough to reach the piano keys. His best-known virtuosity is in the blues — the good old, honest, down-to-earth, licks-filled acoustic blues. He is lucky (and old) enough to have learned directly from some of the greats, including Jim Brewer, Pink Andersen, Honeyboy Edwards, Rev. Dan Smith, Daniel Womack, and many more. He is a scholar of the works of Rev. Gary Davis, and comes just about as close as anyone can to replicating Rev. Davis’ intricate style of guitar playing.

Andy’s blues work is studied and appreciated by blues scholars and casual listeners alike. But as he considers folk music to be One Big Thing, Andy’s repertoire is broader than that, including old-time string band music, gospel, Celtic fiddle tunes, country songs, piano rags, southern mountain music and English Music Hall material. His influences, correspondingly broad, range from Rev. Gary to Uncle Dave Macon, James P. Johnson to the Carter family, Woody Guthrie and Jimmy Rodgers to Harry Partch. Proficient on the 6 and 12 string guitar he is a talented player of fiddle, 5-string banjo, piano, mandolin and autoharp, and he is the only performing Dolceolist anywhere. Great grandfather to the Casio, the Dolceola is a chord zither with a keyboard, vintage early 1900s. It is played like a piano, and sounds similar to a harpsichord.

Cohen has been compared to the legendary Paul Geremia, and for good reason. Both gentlemen possess an incredible knowledge of acoustic blues and roots music and sing and play it like Mississippi John Hurt reincarnated. Cohen’s music is American roots music at its best: haunting and melodic yet simultaneously nasty and gritty, accentuated by the roughest, meanest yet sweetest guitar sounds known to the human ear. So, all you blues fans be sure to be here — we don’t get many like Andy.