Frank Matheis & Phil Wiggins - SWEET, BITTER BLUES

Sweet Bitter Blues: Washington, DC’s Homemade Blues depicts the life and times of harmonica player Phil Wiggins and the unique, vibrant music scene around him, as described by music journalist Frank Matheis. Wiggins and Matheis will talk with Dick Hermans about the living tradition of acoustic blues.

Featuring Wiggins’s story, but including information on many musicians, the volume presents an incomparable documentary of the African American blues scene in Washington, DC, from 1975 to the present. Sweet Bitter Blues features biographies and supporting essays based on Wiggins’s recollections and supplemented by Matheis’s research, along with a foreword by noted blues scholar Elijah Wald, historic interviews by Dr. Barry Lee Pearson with John Cephas and Archie Edwards, and previously unpublished and rare photographs.

Phil Wiggins is a blues musician, teacher, artistic director, and recipient of the NEA National Heritage Fellowship (2017), the highest honor the United States bestows on the traditional arts. He is a two-time winner of the prestigious W. C. Handy Blues Foundation Award, in 1984 for Best Traditional Album of the Year and in 1987 as Entertainer of the Year.

Frank Matheis is a contributing writer for Living Blues magazine and publisher of thecountryblues.com. As a former radio DJ with WKZE, WVKR, and Deutschlandradio (German NPR), he has produced award-winning radio documentaries.

Oblong Books & Music in Rhinebeck is a fully wheelchair accessible space with on-site van accessible parking. Microphones and speakers will not be used at this event but can be made available with advance notice. If you have specific questions about the space or how an event can be made more accessible to you, please do not hesitate to contact us: info@oblongbooks.com.