Steve Kinzie and Steve Sher will be performing at the Tonasket CCC Coffee House on Friday, March 23 at 6:30 p.m., following a dinner that starts at 5:30 p.m.
TONASKET – Steve Sher and Steve Kinzie will be performing at the next Tonasket Community Cultural Center Coffee House on March 23.
The two Steves play mostly original music on acoustic and electrical guitars, slide guitar and five-string banjo. Their music is a soulful blend of folk/jazz/blues with a touch of rockabilly, according to Coffee House organizers. For the performance they will be joined by Jill Trueblood on drums.
“I began singing and playing at the age of nine and received my first guitar, a Harmony Monterey, for my 10th birthday,” said Sher. “Six months of lessons turned out to be the extent of my formal music education.
Sher, who lives near Molson, says Rock and Roll, R&B and Soul music provided his first inspiration and motivated early collaborations in a few junior high and high school bands.
“My introduction to the music of the masters of the Blues in my teens and early twenties set me on a new course, which turned into a lifelong quest to tap into, and express, the emotional energy of the Blues,” said Sher.
In recent years, he has played lead guitar with Northwest Blues, Soul and R&B bands including the Michael Tracey Band, Matty Slim and the OneFour 5’s, and the late J.C. Rico’s Zulu Dragon.
Kinzie was raised in Tonasket and began playing guitar and five-string banjo during the folk music revival in the early sixties. Drawing from poems and songs written over many years, he has recorded four albums of original music and two albums with the folk group, Kindling.
He says he has worked as an orchard laborer, carpenter’s assistant, warehouse flunky, apple orchardist, sheetrock hanger, Latin teacher, director of a nonprofit in Indiana (Education for Conflict Resolution), school bus driver, and elementary school custodian.
In 2010, he and his wife, Debbie Roberts, relocated to Tonasket from Southern California on his retirement from the University of La Verne, where he was Adjunct Professor of Writing and Peace Studies, and Director of the University’s tutoring center.
