“Rising from the Mississippi Delta region, blues music was quickly integrated into African American musicians' existing repertoire of rags, dance tunes, ballads, religious music, and popular songs. By the early 1920s the fusion of these influences created the so-called East Coast or Piedmont style characterized by a highly syncopated guitar technique. Songsters, musicians who could play a variety of tunes and styles, usually played guitar on their recordings. They found ready audiences at rural house parties, mining and lumber camps, city street corners, factory exits, and town dancehalls.”
                                                                                                               

                                                                                                                -  Library of the University of Virginia



“Piedmont Blues artists and songs were incredibly popular in the U.S. in the early part of the Twentieth Century and had a big influence on the rock, blues, country and even jazz music that followed.  Many of the songs are very entertaining, giving a view of life 100 years ago that you just don’t find in history books.”

                                                                                                              - Gene Toennisson


“In 1970, when I first heard Hot Tuna’s Jorma Kaukonen play Hesitation Blues, I was totally in awe and couldn’t sleep until I could figure out what he was doing and play it too.  So Hot Tuna and the Piedmont style have been a big influence on everything I’ve done since then.  It wasn’t until recently, though, that I started to dig a little deeper and found a kind of hidden world of American roots music…the Piedmont Blues.”        
                                                                                                               -  Dave Sams