Hard Luck Café: Jon Shain -and- Casey Baron

Piedmont Blues & More: Durham, North Carolina based singer-songwriter and guitarist Jon Shain shares the bill with Long Island’s own Casey Baron during the monthly Hard Luck Café concert series co-presented by the Folk Music Society of Huntington and the Cinema Arts Centre (423 Park Avenue, Huntington) in the Cinema’s Sky Room on Wednesday, April 17, from 7-10 p.m. An open mic, for which sign-up starts at 6:30 p.m., precedes the concert. Tickets are $20 ($15 for Cinema Arts Centre/FMSH members) and can be purchased online at cinemaartscentre.org or at the box office now through the evening of the event.

Jon Shain (Photo: Jeff Fasano)

Jon Shain (jonshain.com) is a Durham, North Carolina-based singer-songwriter & guitarist and a 2019 International Blues Challenge winner in the solo duo category. Shain, who had the good fortune to learn directly from a number of NC’s older blues players, has been turning heads for years with his words, his fiery acoustic guitar work, and a musical style that combines improvised Piedmont blues with bluegrass, swing, and ragtime.

Shain has released nine solo albums to date, as well as two albums with duo partner FJ Ventre, a Jon Shain Trio live album, and an album of co-writes with Joe Newberry. Shain’s newest album, Restless Soul Syndrome, will be released on April 9.  Besides performing and recording, he is the author of the music books Gettin’ Handy With the Blues – a Tribute to the Legacy of W.C. Handy and Jon Shain’s Fingerstyle Guitar Method, both published by Mel Bay Publications.

Shain, who has previously performed for the Hard Luck Café series both live and online, also teaches Piedmont blues guitar and produces albums for other artists. Joining him on harmonica will be Bill Newton, a founding member of three notable musical groups in NC, who has also recorded with the Indigo Girls and Big Mama E and the Cool, among others.

Casey Baron

Casey Baron has been playing guitar since the age of eight. He developed a passion to build his own custom guitars at the age of ten after learning about the delta blues and cigar box guitars. Since then, he has continued to build cigar box guitars, solid body guitars, and banjos, while playing piedmont blues and folk music influenced by the styles of Taj Mahal, Ry Cooder, and Bukka White.

In October 2013, Crossroads Music Store in Amagansett agreed to sell Baron’s guitars. As it happened, it was the same day that local blues musician Kerry Kearney was holding a workshop there. It was Baron’s good fortune that Kearney was immediately taken with the young talent, whom he dubbed “The Cigar Box Kid.” Since then, Baron been a featured guest at some of Kearney’s shows, as well as having performed at the York, Pennsylvania Cigar Box Guitar Festival and at My Father’s Place here on LI.