After Hours with The Robert Randolph Family Band

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by Wendy Schumer

jeffree_robert-randolph_6_ZOOMSaturday night after enjoying an hour or so of the great jam at Hotel 50 we strolled over to the Marriott to enjoy the RRFB.  The room was pleasantly full, not too crowded, and the music was great, as expected.  What wasn’t expected was the surprise performance by a random musician in the audience. About ¾’s of the way through the show Robert picked up one of the many guitars on the stage and held it out to the crowd.  This was immediately following the hip-shaking of about 20 women dancing on stage so needless to say the security guards were nervous about more audience participation.  To everyone’s surprise the guy who took the guitar from Robert could REALLY play.  Robert then invited him up on stage and even got up from his pedal slide to play with him.  So who was this random musician?  I had to find out.

I had the pleasure of meeting Jeffree White after the show and today spent some time chatting with him to find out more. Jeffree came to the after hours show in hopes of being Read more

Cascade Blues Volunteers ROCK the WFBF!

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I’d like to take this opportunity to publicly thank all of the amazing volunteers that took time out of their days and nights during the Waterfront Blues Festival to help us in the CBA booth.

Thank you for your support, your time and your dedication during the Festival. You were all “over the top” fabulous. Arriving on time, talking to so many people and just doing whatever needed to be done. We couldn’t have pulled these four days off without your help. We exceeded our goal Read more

Unsung Blues Hero Ray Varner Contributes His Talents by Promoting the Blues

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By Laurie Morrisey
A while back, I approached Safeway Waterfront Blues Festival Talent Coordinator, Peter Dammann, and asked him about some of the unsung heroes of the festival. The first name that came to his mind was Ray Varner. Ray worked at the Fed-Ex Stage for about 10 years, although he’s retired now.

“He was the perfect guy for that gig. I relied on his judgment a lot; he was one of the people, especially in the early years, that encouraged me to go after some of the Read more