“The old guys were my teachers, not just teachers of particular songs, though that's also true. They taught me a lot about responsibility, to them, to traditions, to the audience, to myself.”

Andy Cohen: Whistlin' the Music Past

Andy Cohen is a virtuoso finger-style guitarist described as “a walking, talking folk-blues-roots music encyclopedia.” During the Sixties folk revival, he got hooked on the music of luminaries old and young, from Big Bill Broonzy to the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, although his most profound experience came at 16 when he first heard blues/gospel icon Rev. Gary Davis. He has since devoted his life to studying, performing, and promoting traditional blues and folk music of the pre-World War II era and has toured and played with, among others, Martin, Bogan & Armstrong, John Jackson, Rev. Gary Davis, Jim Brewer, and Honeyboy Edwards. Based these days in Memphis, Tenn., Andy holds a master’s degree in anthropology and has more than a dozen recordings to his credit, including Oh Glory, How Happy I Am: The Sacred Songs of Rev. Gary Davis and numerous albums on the Earwig label. He is a recipient of both the Eisteddfod Award from the Eisteddfod Traditional Music Festival and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the California Autoharp Gathering.

(Photo: Andy Cohen, a virtuoso finger-style guitarist)

Whistlin’ Past the Graveyard, the captivating new album by acclaimed acoustic performers Andy Cohen, Eleanor Ellis and William Lee Ellis, which is scheduled for release on March 20 2026 on Riverlark Music. The ambitious project is a 21-track tour-de-force of old-time blues, gospel, ballads, ragtime, and country song that surpasses their previous high bar, the 1993 Marimac outing, Preachin’ in That Wilderness. Produced by William Lee Ellis and River Hartley (Ghost Hymns), Whistlin’ is a truly unique listen, one that fits no single musical category; rather, it explores with finger-picked verve and joy the expansive palette of America’s musical past, still relevant and very much alive in the sound of this remarkable trio.

Interview by Michael Limnios              Archive: Andy Cohen, 2015 & 2020 Interview 

Special Thanks: Andy Cohen, Geraint & Deb Jones (G Promo PR), Bill Ellis

What keeps a musician passionate after four decades in roots music? How do your experiences around the US (Ohio, South Carolina, North Carolina, New York, Memphis) affect your music? 

It's funny, I don't really make a claim to 'my' music. It's a lot of other peoples' that I can play through well enough that the guys who played them on 78s would probably recognize them. I try to make it about them, not me. Memphis is a great place to study the Blues from, along with its variants and allied forms. It's also a great place to stand humbly. At best I feel like I'm something between an interloper and an advocate.

How can a band/musician truly turn the old-time Roots music into a commercial and popular genre of music for today's audience?

I don't think it can be done. What we can get away with on the raw strength of how well we play is pretty far reaching, just because of the combined robusticity of the music, and our own general robusticity. All three of us are strong players and singers with lots of repertoire and experience. Whatever of the flavor of the Old Music comes through when we play, it's because we trust the material and put our shoulders to it. 

“Folk tunes are like plankton, they are the fundamental layer of all musical creativity no matter how complex or uniquely conceptualized. In my opinion different folk styles shouldn't just be mashed together without consideration of the outcome. The people who made up the songs we sing, sang and played behind them the way they did because it felt right and good for them to do them that way.” (Photo: Larkin Bryant & Andy Cohen)

Currently you've one more release with Riverlark Music. How did the idea of your own label come about?

It's actually not my label. My wife, Larkin started it. She made a CD called Lark in the Twilight, on the lap dulcimer, that was our first issue. The second was my Rev. Davis Tribute, Oh Glory, How Happy I Am. Then I made several more CDs over the years. We made one together called Mississippi Heavy Water Blues, now out of print. I made one called Dolceola Favorites, using my Dolceola and another one tuned slightly differently, that Dobro Dick Dillof owned and that I was getting fixed for him. I want to get all the out-of-print ones back in print, but that takes money. At the very least I gotta get them so people can download them.

Larkin passed away in 2021, brain cancer. I just continued what she was already doing. Hopefully she won't disapprove from her present vantage point. Riverlark still sells her dulcimer instruction book and some dulcimer strings and a few other things. I've gotten about a dozen CDs made since she passed, working with Michael Frank of Earwig Music. I'm the executive producer but he and his team are the ones who really know the business.

I like to think I know a little something about music, particularly on the guitar. The present iteration of Riverlark  does indeed consist mostly of guitar players. Most of those are blues players, though some are fluent in many genres. Bill Ellis, Eleanor Ellis and I just sent one out to the world, 'Whistlin' Past the Graveyard'. I hope it sells, we all put everything we had into it. 

I stand by all the Riverlark artists, including my 'umbleself. We are a diverse lot, all shapes and sizes but we all know what makes our blood boil. Everybody on the label is steeped and knowledgeable in their specialties, and every one of them is quirky and individualistic. I'm proud to have every one of them on board.  

“It's funny, I don't really make a claim to 'my' music. It's a lot of other peoples' that I can play through well enough that the guys who played them on 78s would probably recognize them. I try to make it about them, not me. ”  (Andy Cohen, Eleanor Ellis and William Lee Ellis / Photo by Jennifer Sirey)

Do you have any stories about the making of the new album project: Whistlin' Past the Graveyard? What's the balance in old-time music between technique (skills) and soul/emotions?

Only that Eleanor was falling apart, Bill's mother-in-law was having a hard time. It was the middle of winter in Vermont, and we were pressed for time. Eleanor had a heart condition that needed attention. After I did my part and came home, Eleanor stayed and got her heart fixed. She's okay now. Bill's Mother-in-Law eventually passed away. We all have complex lives that we manage somehow. This CD, our best effort, is only one aspect. We're all teachers, implicitly or explicitly. Bill and I are technicians on whatever instruments we play. Bill has a masters in classical performance, I've had little bits of instruction here and there; Eleanor's musical education is more catch as catch can but nevertheless broad. We all constructed our presentation styles on pre WW II models. And we all know enough theory, including 'crooked tune' theory, to navigate blues and Old Time Music through all of their vagaries. Structurally, Blues and Country Music are simple; getting it right, not so much. Acquiring enough soul to do them justice is the hard part, and the medium part is how prepared you are to commit to the forms, to sharpen what God gave you into something presentable. 

You played with many of the major blues players of the 20th century. How has your experience with the "golden era" of blues influenced the way you compose and perform today?

Well, the way my younger friends treat me now, you'd think I was back there with the old guys in the 20s and 30s. I'll be turning eighty in the summer, so they think I'm right up there with Julius Caesar and God Himself. I was born in 1946, after the Shoah, in the age of Penecillinand the Polio vaccine, to a middle class family. That set me up to be at stage side when the Old Guys of my youth were brought forward for a second look. The timing was good and I am ever grateful. My view is that whatever we young'uns accomplish is built on what the old guys did under much harsher conditions. I'm proud of my little role in the Folk Revival, and our general role in preserving, in the air, what's on some of those 78s. 

The old guys were my teachers, not just teachers of particular songs, though that's also true. They taught me a lot about responsibility, to them, to traditions, to the audience, to myself.

“Structurally, Blues and Country Music are simple; getting it right, not so much. Acquiring enough soul to do them justice is the hard part, and the medium part is how prepared you are to commit to the forms, to sharpen what God gave you into something presentable.” (Photo: Andy Cohen, a Memphis-based finger-style guitarist at Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s grave, Northwood Cemetery, Pennsylvania)

Are there any specific memories or highlights with Phil Wiggins, John Cephas, Mad Dog Lester, and Jim Brewer that you would like to tell us about?!

I'm not one to romanticize the process too much. It's my work, and they were my colleagues. One of my most leaned upon come-uppences came while standing beside Jim Brewer at a rest stop urinal, him muttering under his breath, 'Ridin' and pissin', ridin' and pissin'...' Once I was complaining to Emily Friedman, founder of the Chicago Folk mag Come For To Sing, and she looked me straight in the eye and said, 'Nobody MADE you be a folksinger'. True enough. I've said often enough that if I did this for money I wouldn't do it. I guess, I do it just because I can.

Lester saved our lives at the end of the Traveling Blues Revue run. Honeyboy and Red wanted to go home right after the show but anyone who would be driving was too exhausted. It was Lester who negotiate a cessation of hostilities, and we all got home safely in the morning. Afterward there were no hard feelings, but it was tense for a minute.

Why is it important we preserve and spread the expansive palette of America's musical past? What is the role of music/musicians in today's society?

Folk tunes are like plankton, they are the fundamental layer of all musical creativity no matter how complex or uniquely conceptualized. In my opinion different folk styles shouldn't just be mashed together without consideration of the outcome. The people who made up the songs we sing, sang and played behind them the way they did because it felt right and good for them to do them that way. We'll take their word for it and do it like that. I remember, fifty-some years ago, I was helping organize a festival at the university in Cullowhee, North Carolina. An older guy, one of the janitors for the school approached me.: 'You the guy that's puttin' on that fiddle contest?' and I said yeah, what can I do for ya? And he said, 'Well, you better get my cousin, he plays it RIGHT!'

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(Photo: Andy Cohen)