We're honored to have the great Nat Reese on faculty this year for the Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival. Nat grew up in Virginia listening to his father's guitar and his mother's concertina. After showing some talent on his father's guitar, the family purchased a Martin Tiple 12-string.

Nat began to learn songs from itinerant black musicians who rode the rails throughout the mountain coal camps, company towns that were divided into “colored,” white, and Italian sections.

In 1939, Nat first
met and performed with multi-instrumentalist Howard Armstrong, who was
traveling through and playing the coal camp circuit from his home in Tennessee. The
duo performed together regularly until Armstrong’s death in 2003.

The Virginia Folklife Program produced an excellent video of Nat recording his "Save a Seat for Me" release- we hope that you enjoy it and that it encourages you to come out to Port Townsend to play with Nat.