Phil Wiggins
The late Phil Wiggins, NEA National Heritage Fellow and internationally acclaimed blues harmonica virtuoso, was the principal storyteller and guiding force behind this book. For more than four decades, he stood at the heart of the Washington, D.C., acoustic blues community and the broader East Coast blues revival. As a performer, educator, and advocate of the Piedmont blues tradition, he knew, performed with, and befriended nearly every significant acoustic blues artist in the region between 1975 and 2015. He didn’t simply document this history—he lived it. For 33 years, he partnered with the legendary “Bowling Green” John Cephas in the internationally celebrated duo Cephas & Wiggins, beginning with their meeting at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 1976. (read more)
Recording for Flying Fish and Alligator Records, the duo earned W.C. Handy Awards and became fixtures at festivals and workshops worldwide as performers, folklorists, storytellers, and cultural ambassadors.
Recognized as one of the world’s foremost blues harmonica players, Wiggins performed across North America, Europe, Africa, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Australia, China, and Russia. Cephas & Wiggins represented the United States on State Department cultural tours and performed at the White House for President Bill Clinton and his family.
Following John Cephas’s death in 2009, Wiggins performed with West Virginia bluesman Nat Reese until Reese’s passing in 2012.
Beyond the stage, Wiggins dedicated decades to music education. He taught for 24 years at the Augusta Heritage Center of Davis & Elkins College, where he helped establish the influential Blues Week program. He also served as artistic director of the Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Workshop in Washington State and remained active with the National Council for the Traditional Arts.
Throughout his career, Wiggins performed with artists including B.B. King, Taj Mahal, Corey Harris, Chuck Brown, Guy Davis, Alvin Youngblood Hart, and many others.
Frank Matheis
The music journalist, radio producer, and author Frank Matheis specializes in traditional acoustic blues and American roots music. A longtime contributor to Living Blues magazine and former writer for Blues Access, he is also publisher of thecountryblues.com. For more than four decades, he has studied, documented, and promoted traditional roots & blues through writing, broadcasting, and documentary production. He has published more than 900 articles on blues, roots, folk, jazz, and the arts, and spent a decade hosting blues and roots music programs on WKZE-FM and WVKR-FM in New York and Connecticut.
As a radio producer, his documentaries have aired on Deutschlandradio as well as stations in the United States and Australia. His work has received numerous honors, including the 2003 New York Festivals Best International Documentary Award.
Since 2024 he has been active as nature photographer, with exhibits at the Connecticut Audubon Society. His current project is the memoir of renowned naturalist Jenny Richards titled Rooted in Wonder – A Memoir of an Appalachian Naturalist and Environmental Educator.
