Culture
29th Annual River City Blues Festival: Micah Kesselring
By: Emily Votaw
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Micah Kesselring’s relationship with the guitar began when he was only nine years old, playing on the porch of the log cabin that his father built nestled in the Hocking Hills. Kesselring taught himself to play the music he loved as an adolescent, schooling himself on the simple, poignant stylings of late ’90s Californian pop punk before moving on to trying his hand at far more complex music, like that of Jimi Hendrix and the Allman Brothers Band. He soon realized that some of his favorite songs by those classic rock acts were covers of blues songs from the early twentieth century, serving as his entry point into the genre that would ultimately catapult him to a full-time career as a musician early on in his life.
Since then, Kesselring has released two acclaimed albums, 2013’s Log Cabin Blues and 2015’s Cabin Fever Blues, and collected a slew of accolades, including three trips to Memphis, TN for the International Blues Challenge, representing the Kentucky Blues Society, the Pomeroy Blues and Jazz Society, and, most recently, the Mid-Ohio Valley Blues, Jazz, and Folk Music Society.
WOUB spoke to Kesselring about his two forthcoming albums of disparate-yet-related styles, creating what he calls “Appalachian Trance Blues,” and returning to the River City Blues Festival in Marietta later this month.
The 29th Annual River City Blues Festival will take place Friday, March 20 and Saturday, March 21 at The Lafayette Hotel (101 Front Street, Marietta OH ). The event is presented by The Blues, Jazz & Folk Music Society. Tickets are available at the door and also by calling Peggy Bolen at 740-376-0222.