LAKEPORT, Calif. – Lakeport's Soper Reese Theatre will play host to a Blues Hall of Fame inductee and four-time Blues Music Award winner in a special appearance this weekend.
Bluesman Joe Louis Walker will perform at 7 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 13, at the theater, located at 275 S. Main St., Lakeport.
Walker has played his electric guitar with the likes of B.B. King, Jimmy Hendrix, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters.
Considered one of the greatest bluesmen of his generation, Walker is a four-time Blues Music Award winner and Blues Foundation Contemporary Male Artist of the Year.
He's nominated for Best Rock Blues Album of the Year for his latest release, “Everybody Wants A Piece.” Walker will be playing songs from that new work as well as previous albums at the Saturday concert.
In an interview with Lake County News, Walker – who now lives on the East Coast – described growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in a family that loved music.
Walker credits his parents with inspiring him to become a musician.
His parents came from the South, and they shared with their children the music that they had grown up with and loved.
When he was small, his father would come home from work, put his little record player up on the table and play his 45 RPM records.
His mother and older siblings also loved to share their music, and Walker later would join a band formed by his cousins.
He said music kept them out of trouble and directed their energy in a positive way.
While he's played with many greats over the years, Walker said he has worked hard to create his own distinct voice and sound, which greats like Willie Dixon and BB King encouraged him to do.
“Do you,” he recalled Dixon telling him. “You doing a bad version of you is better than you doing a good version of me.”
He said he's drawn on a lot of influences in developing his distinctive style, noting that “Music is university.”
Describing his music, he again hearkens to something Dixon once told him, “'Your music is sort of all over the place,' and I sort of like it like that.”
Walker doesn't consider himself a pure blues or a pure rock guy, adding that he doubts anyone is “pure” anything in any genre these days.
“I just try to keep my ears and my eyes and my heart open, and I think if you do that, it keeps you current and it keeps you sort of relevant,” he said.
Tickets are on sale for $20, $18 and $15. All seats are reserved. The theater’s dance floor will be open. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
Tickets are available online at www.SoperReeseTheatre.com or at The Travel Center, 1265 S. Main, Lakeport, Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
For more information call 707-263-0577.
If you can't make the Saturday concert, Walker said to keep an eye out for him on other dates around California, where he'll be visiting throughout August, with a return trip planned in September.
Keep up with Walker by checking out his Web site at www.joelouiswalker.com or following him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/joelouiswalker .
John Jensen contributed to this article.
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