Bob Shoemaker

Bob Shoemaker's music is at once classic and contemporary. Raised on a steady diet of Leadbelly, Son House, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Bob cultivated the touch of a blues master at an early age on his 1936 National Steel Guitar. Honed for decades busking the streets of Seattle, Portland and his native Boston, he sharpened his command of the Delta Blues into a style that has caught the discerning ears of such artisits as Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal. Upon meeting blues legend Willie Dixon, Bob received Dixon's personal endorsement to play his songs when Willie said: " The more you do it, the more I like it." Combining his virtuosic slide and finger-picking technique with powerful and moving vocals, Bob delivers the essence of the blues night after night in the favoured West Coast venues of this classic American artfrom.

Victory Review
The Deep Blues:
Bainbridge, Bellevue, and Ballard
-by Marc Hoffman
These days, you can find the deep blues in the unlikeliest places. Even on Bainbridge Island, for example, where people are about equally divided between the Haves and the Have Yachts. I stepped into the Harbor House Pub on Bainbridge the other night to hear Northwest bluesman Bob Shoemaker play the blues. I walked away convinced that he's simply one of the finest, most exciting acoustic bluesmen I've ever heard anywhere.

I first heard Bob one night a couple of months ago. I'd gotten a call from a friend down at the Harbor House who pointed the phone toward the stage and said "Hear that?" You gotta get down here RIGHT NOW! Some guy I've never heard of is in here just tearing up this place!"

Sure enough, Bob tore up the place that night with his playing, and I've seen him tear it up again several times since. First of all he is steeped in blues tradition. He plays and sings songs by most of theblues masters: Robert Johnson, Son House, Willie Dixon, Sonny By Williamson, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Johm Hurt, Fred McDowell, Henry James, Hound Dog Taylor, Blind willie Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, and on and on. He also does a great job on songs by Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Taj Mahal, Johnny Winter, Leo Kottke, Lowell George, and others. His versions of Howlin' Wolf's "Howlin' for my Darling", and "All Night Long", are astounding; so are his take on Lowell George's "Willin'" and "Sailing Shoes", John Hurt's Sliding Delta and Fred McDowell's "You Gotta Move". He''s equally adept at at slow and wild frenetic slide blues. He plays razor-sharp slide on a National Steel dobro and a Taylor cutaway 12-string. he also fingerpicks cleanly with thumb and three fingers, and he has a deep, resonant blues voice that sounds like it just caught the last flight up here from Clarksdale, Mississippi. He put a rotary fan at his feet to help him cool down when he plays. He needs it. He's hot! The Sampson of the blues guitar- He will tear your place down.
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