Mark Hummel’s 30th Annual Blues Harmonica Blowout at The Center for the Arts

GRASS VALLEY, CA, January 25, 2022 – Mark Hummel’s Blues Harmonica Blowout celebrates 30 years in 2023 with a stop at The Center for the Arts on February 23. (The past two years’ blowouts were postponed due to the pandemic.) The Blowout started on a Sunday night in 1991 at Ashkenaz in Berkeley with four harmonica players – Rick Estrin, Mark Hummel, Dave Earl, and Doug Jay. Throughout the years, the traveling blues show has featured many of the top Harp Blowers, including Huey Lewis, John Mayall, James Cotton, Charlie Musselwhite, John Hammond, Magic Dick, and Lee Oskar. The guitar chair is equally stunning with Elvin Bishop, Duke Robillard, Anson Funderburgh, and Jr Watson – to name a few.

Blowout tours have covered thousands of miles to every part of the US and Canada, including a few European tours. Mark Hummel’s Blues Harmonica Blowouts have carried the Blues Torch to many blues fans everywhere! This blowout features: Magic Dick (J. Geils Band), John Nemeth, Sugar Ray Norcia, Aki Kumar, Duke Robillard – guitar (Roomful of Blues, Fabulous Thunderbirds, Bob Dylan), Anson Funderburgh – guitar, Wes Starr – drums, and Randy Bermudes – bass.

Producer Mark Hummel, is a Grammy nominee and Blues Award winner who started playing harmonica in 1970 and has gone on to become one of the premier blues harmonica players of his generation. Hummel has been featured on over thirty recordings since 1985 including the Grammy-nominated 2013 Blind Pig release Remembering Little Walter, a live recording from a previous Mark Hummel Blues Harmonica Blowout that pays tribute to Little Walter. 

Hummel has released more than 20 solo albums and more than another 20 collaborations and compilations, with his latest album Mark Hummel Proudly Presents East Bay Blues Vaults 1976-1988. Hummel opens the vaults to the Golden Age of the East Bay – San Francisco Blues Scene and the legendary artists that both inspired and welcomed him in the 1970s and 80s. 

“Mark Hummel came of age in the early ’70s at the height of rock and roll, like many of his peers went and bought a harmonica and hasn’t stopped playing since. A specialist in West Coast Blues, he is a seasoned showman who knows more than a thing or two about how to please an audience.” (The New Yorker). 

Year after year Mark Hummel’s Blues Harmonica Blowout continues to play festivals nationally and internationally as well as sold-out venues coast to coast. Don’t miss their 30th annual celebration performance at The Center for the Arts on February 23, 2023.