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Wellsboro Community Concert Association to host concert by award-winning blues musician

WELLSBORO — For the Wellsboro Community Concert Association’s second concert of the 2016-2017 season, internationally and nationally acclaimed Toby Walker will be on stage performing his guitar-picking blend of blues, ragtime, country, bluegrass, rock, swing and old time jazz.

The concert set for 7:30 p.m. Oct. 28 in the Coolidge Theatre at the Deane Center for the Performing Arts, 104 Main St.

Opening for Walker will be his wife, Carol. A 2014 and 2016 finalist in the annual National Mountain Dulcimer Champ­ionship in Winfield, Kansas, she will perform traditional Manx jigs and ballads and familiar favorites on the Appalachian mountain dulcimer.

Toby, hailed as a music guitar virtuoso and songwriter, will play and sing selections from his albums, including his newest, “Mileage.” Released on March 1, it includes 17 songs, 11 of them originals, which he plays on his acoustic guitars, a 1956 Martin D-18 and National Tri-Cone resonator.

Toby has been performing since 1970. As a young man, his passion for blues, rags, folk and other traditional American music drove the Long Island, New York native to the Mississippi Delta, Virginia and the Carolinas, where he tracked down some of the more obscure but immensely talented music makers of an earlier era.

He learned directly from Eugene Powell, James “Son” Thomas, Etta Baker and R.L Burnside, among others.

He has received numerous awards recognizing him for his unique style, including being the first place recipient of the International Blues Challenge Award, solo division, by the Blues Foundation in Memphis, Tennessee in 2002.

In 2010, he won the New York Music Award for Best Instrumental CD and in 2014 was inducted into the New York Blues Hall of Fame.

For more information or to buy tickets, visit www.wellsborocca.org or call 570-724-6220.

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