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Jontavious Willis, 2020 Grammy nominee for "Best Traditional Blues Album"

  • The Porch Southern Fare & Juke Joint 175 Rivers Edge Drive Medford, MA, 02155 United States (map)

Just coming off his Grammy nomination for "Best Traditional Blues Album", Jontavious Willis is ready to show you what he can do.

Every generation or so a young bluesman bursts onto the scene. Someone who sends a jolt through blues lovers. Someone who has mastered the craft for sure, but who also has the blues deep down in his heart and soul.

At the age of 22, bluesman JONTAVIOUS WILLIS may be the one.

“That’s my Wonderboy, the Wunderkind,” Taj Mahal said after inviting Jontavious to play on stage in 2015. “He’s a great new voice of the twenty-first century in the acoustic blues. I just love the way he plays.”

“When I heard him play I said to myself: this is how the blues, as I know it, is going to stay alive,” said Paul Oscher.

“Only a few like him emerge every decade or so, when even the most hard core blues fans realize immediately that this is the real deal,” writes Frank Matheis in Living Blues Magazine.

Hailing from Greenville, Ga., Jontavious grew up singing gospel music at the Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church with his grandfather. At the age of 14, he came across a YouTube video of Muddy Waters playing “Hoochie Coochie Man” and was hooked. That’s when he set his course on the blues. All types — Delta, Piedmont, Texas, gospel. As a fingerpicker, flat-picker and slide player. On guitar, harmonica, banjo and cigar box.

And four years later he was playing on Taj Mahal’s stage.

Earlier Event: May 9
Band of Killers
Later Event: July 10
Big Jon Short on the patio!