Eric Lugosch and The Near Shore Trio

Full dinner service is available during the show. Seating will begin 30 minutes before the start of the show. Seating is assigned to ensure efficiency of service. Ticket price DOES NOT include food and drink.

When Mississippi John Hurt and the Reverend Gary Davis were sitting alone in their rooms in the 1920s figuring out how to make their guitars sing like pianos, no one could have anticipated that their efforts, emerging from a haze of poverty, would influence generations of guitarists thereafter. Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones and The Grateful Dead are some of the current-day legends who discovered the blues genre of these pioneers and adapted it to their own covers. Another contemporary who as a kid also recognized the genius in the blues fingerpicking of Hurt and Davis was Chicagoan Eric Lugosch, who likewise sat alone in his formative years in his room figuring out the puzzles of how it was all done. Lugosch, though, unlike the Stones and Dead, was intent on successfully duplicating the virtuosity and difficulty of the art of solo guitar. Fast forward several years later, and already a resident of the blues capital of the world in Chicago, Eric Lugosch found his place of residence to be fortuitous in helping him to claim his own bit of legend as a guitar instructor at the renowned Old Town School of Folk. From this pulpit, he spent 25 years passing the torch of fingerstyle secrets – from ragtime, swing, blues, folk and jazz – to his pupils. In 1984, he seized the holy grail of fingerstylists, a first place showing at the Winfield International Fingerstyle Guitar Competition, establishing his preeminence in the field. Just as telling of Lugosch’s skill is the recognition by cultural tastemakers in the genre. Peter Finger, the German fingerstylist and business helmsman of Acoustic Music Records, had his ear yanked around by the bouncy and joyful pianistic style of Lugosch’s playing. Since, Lugosch has released four albums on Finger’s record label, the most recent in 2024 entitled “Migration.” Autumn of 2024 found Lugosch on tour with Peter Finger with the International Guitar Night through more than a dozen German cities, as well as appearances in Italy, Paris, The Netherlands and Switzerland. Giants in the fingerstyle world have sung Eric’s praises. Pat Donohue said “He has internalized The Reverend Gary Davis’ s style to the point where he can improvise within that style and still have it come out his own.” Legendary British fingerstylist Duck Baker has called him “One of the very best.” Lugosch has shared the stage with Doc Watson, Taj Mahal, John Prine, David Bromberg, Leon Redbone and others. His most recent CD release “Migration” is an amalgam of instrumental ragtime, blues and jazz that would do Mississippi John Hurt and Reverend Gary Davis proud. All except two tracks (Horace Silver and Hoagy Carmichael tunes) are originals, evidence of the same creative spirit that drove Hurt and the

Reverend to accomplish great things in their lives. “Duck Bread” is especially notable, a fitting homage to the great fingerstyle player Duck Baker… complete with a guitar lick that mimics a duck quacking.

In a musical era of lip-synching, overpriced stadium shows, cookie-cutter sameness and supposed musical merit based on total internet streams… it’s refreshing to hear an artist like Eric Lugosch who authentically produces great music the old-fashioned way, with his heart and mind, one note at a time.