There is a vibrant roots & blues scene in the Pacific Northwest of the USA, where Steve James, Sheila Wilcoxson and Kelly Joe Phelps reigned. Nowadays, there are still fine players in that area, like Ben Hunter and Joe Seamons, Lauren Sheehan, Terry Robb, Grant Dermody, and many more. The epicenter of the blues in Washington State is Centrum – the famed Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival in Port Ludlow, where acoustic musicians and students get together annually to learn, teach, and jam. The current music director there is Jontavious Willis, a job held previously by many national treasures, including Phil Wiggins and Jerron Paxton.
There is another guy up there worth listening to, a regular at Centrum, who is putting out some great music, John “Greyhound” Maxwell, a particularly refined and eloquent slide and fingerpicking roots & blues guitarist and singer/songwriter. He is originally from Chicago, and he came to Washington by way of San Francisco where he lived for 30 years. He got around, as his father was an Episcopal priest, which meant a transient life for young John, taking him to Minnesota, San Francisco, and St. Louis.
Like many talented artists and musicians, he enjoyed the security of a steady day job, from which he is now retired after 20 years working for the Golden Gate Bridge and as a bus driver and a bus driver trainer. He has played music throughout his life, but most of that time he was working a so-called “real job” to support family. He started playing guitar at age 15, 53 years ago. By now he knows how to play, and not just a little.
He has issued two self-produced albums, Even Good Dogs Get The Blues (2018) and Blues for Evangeline (2014). The Washington Blues Society named John “Greyhound” Maxwell the 2018 award recipient for Best Acoustic Blues Guitarist. For the most part, he has played solo for the last seven or eight years. He mostly performs locally, and has played in Minneapolis, Las Vegas, and down along the West Coast periodically.
Thecountryblues.com caught up with the 68-year-old bard via telephone on Oct. 31, 2023 , to let him tell his own story:
John “Greyhound” Maxwell: “ I hope is that my respect for the history of the music that I play is evident, both when I play live and when somebody listens to me on a recording. I really care about the quality and the respect for the history and the art form and those people that I’ve learned so much from over the years.
It all started way back in Chicago when I was about 15. I went to the Old Town School of Folk Music to get my first guitar lesson, which was a basic folk guitar kind of strumming class, doing songs like Go Tell Aunt Rhody and things like that. I went to one class for that, and as I was on my way out of the music school that day, I heard bottleneck guitar being played and it turned out that it was Johnny Long, who was teaching at the school. He was himself a student of Homesick James in Chicago. As soon as I heard that sound, I knew that’s what I want to do – not just be strumming. I wanted to play this beautiful slide style. I took six classes from him before my family moved down to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Over the years I got sidetracked into many different musical styles but that original acoustic blues that Johnny turned me onto just has stayed in my heart all those years. I played rock ‘n’ roll, bluegrass, country, and a little bit of jazz. I was in a band in San Francisco in the late ‘70s, but late in the punk scene. We were not a punk band per se, but we were in that scene. But, like I said, blues was always the primary style in my heart that made me happy. I was influenced by early Chicago players, like Robert Nighthawk, Earl Hooker, and Elmore James. Then I started going back and discovering Robert Johnson, Son House, and Charley Patton.
I tend to use resonators for the most part. I own a 1929 National steel body Triolian that I’ve had that for well over 50 years now. As far as wood body guitars, I play Chasson, fine guitars made in Bellingham, WA. The number of guitars that I take with me to a show depends on how many sets I’m playing. Typically, I’ve been doing opening sets for national acts. I’ll bring two Resonators which I can tune – open G and open D -and then I usually have a mandolin with me as well.
My sets are probably 50% original, and then some covers– periodically there’s Tampa Red, Robert Nighthawk, and Blind Willie McTell, for more fingerpicking style. I do a couple very old traditional things like Saint James Infirmary, but that kind of arrangement is something I do on my own as opposed to using somebody else’s arrangement.
Lyrically it’s very important to me to stay true to myself and true to my experience. I have one that I wrote after I retired from bus driving that covers my feelings of that quite well; typical love-gone-wrong songs that are from experience. Musically, I think because I’ve played so many different styles over the years, I’m a solid mixture of influences? Leo Kottke was a big influence for me. I’m somewhere between Elmore James and Leo Kottke as far as musical influences go.
I am trying recently to get a little bit of the old country style from the early songwriters in the genre like Jimmie Rodgers, a crossover from blues and country. I do have Piedmont elements to what I do but I wouldn’t call myself a Piedmont player.
Over the last five years or so, I started leaning towards the listening rooms and the concert halls. I did a lot of years in bars and restaurants. I really appreciate the listening room because it allows you play with dynamics which in a loud bar situation would tend to just get completely lost. I really love using a lot of dynamics in my shows. I’ve been doing quite a few opening act slots for national acts in really nice halls or outdoor concerts. The last one I did was opening for Sonny Landreth for a couple of nights in Seattle – such a phenomenal guitar player and a sweetheart of a person as well. We got on very well. I opened for Ruthie Foster last spring, and she was absolutely lovely. We really had a nice connection. It was a real good show and a good combination between the two of us. I also opened a couple of shows for the late David Lindley. My biggest success as far as a show that I played would have been opening for Taj and Keb’Mo at the Saint Michelle Winery. That was a highlight in my career, performing in front of 4,500 people.
In a more general sense, when I play, I strive for a connection with the crowd, sharing the history of the music and showing a real reverence for that. I get a lot of comments from audience members after that about how much they enjoy hearing the stories behind the songs and the origins. I am very happy with the way that’s going. I think that’s something that I’m satisfied with.”
