Doors 4pm, Music 9:15pm

The Son Henry Trio

If Johnny Cash, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Chris Stapleton, and The Wood Brothers met in a bar and decided to have a jam - well, you’d wish you were there! But since you can’t be, you can listen and dance to the Son Henry Trio instead.  Son Henry is a two-time British Blues Award-winning singer and lap steel / guitarist who plays bluesy electric Americana with Trio bandmembers Marty York (Drums) and Dave Knight (Bass). 

“A Son Henry gig is a taste of Texas, a little bit of wild Alaska… he plays with an acute feel for the rhythms and anger of the delta, in turns subtle and ferocious, hollering and stomping in time with the eerie call of the bottleneck, on the strings of his beat-up ’32 National. How does this translate to a three-piece electric band? It’s a totally different, yet still completely authentic vibe: Roadhouse USA, coming to a town near you.”  — Blues Matters Magazine

Son Henry is a native Rochesterian who spent his teens playing the guitar in the basement and making weekly pilgrimages on the bus to House of Guitars and the Record Archives.  Life and work took him to Dallas, Texas, where he found himself playing alongside Texas Blues legends Mike Morgan, Tyrone Starks, Buddy Miles, and Sam Meyers.  In the late 90’s, he moved north to Alaska and spent the next 10 years playing the rough-and-tumble bars and festivals across the last frontier, releasing his first two albums, Glenn Highway Blues and Heartache and Trouble, and learning to play the lap steel and dobro, perfecting his fingerpicking style, and honing his vocals. It’s cold.  And dark.  And there’s not a lot to do…

In 2005, Son moved to Scotland and quickly became a favorite at the Roots music clubs, bars, and festivals across the UK and Europe - places like the Crawdaddy, Redcar and the Red Lion in the UK and Festivals including the Orkney, Arbroath, Dundee, and Burnley Mechanics Festivals (UK), Gaastroblues (Hungary), Augustibluus (Estonia), Blues on the Green (US) and the Ft. Worth Blues Festival (US). He also released his third album, Long Way Home, won two British Blues Awards, and had two original tracks “Ribbon of Tar” and “Second Glance”, featured on the BBC.

A move back to Texas, this time to Houston, in 2012 led to a strong infusion of Honky-Tonk, twang, and red dirt swing into his music with the happy result of a truly unique and original sound.  During his Houston years, he backed off from fronting a band, focusing instead on raising a family and songwriting, while performing as lead guitarist and string instrumentalist for Nashville recording artists Jon Stork and Blake Harlow.  

Now come full circle back to Rochester, Son is retaking center stage, developing an East Coast audience, writing songs, and recording again.  2023 saw the release of Thrift Store Sorcerer, a poetic collection of solo acoustic lap steel and finger-style songs written in Scotland and Houston during the pandemic.  Coming in 2024, Grace is an album recorded in Budapest in September 2023 with long-time Hungarian collaborators, The T-Rogers Band.  In the works are also a new Alan-Lomax style roots-music album recorded on Edison wax phonograph cylinders, and a UK tour in September 2024.

https://sonhenry.com/

Cover: $6