With well over 50 years of performing experience, Michael “Hawkeye” Herman exemplifies the range of possibilities in acoustic blues, and personifies versatile musicianship, originality, and compelling artistry as a blues storyteller. His·dynamic performances have won him a faithful following, and he leads a very active touring schedule of performances at festivals, concerts, school programs, and workshops. Hawkeye performs a wide variety of traditional blues, ballads, swing, and original tunes, on six-string and twelve-string guitar, and is an adept and exciting practitioner of slide guitar and slide mandolin. His music has been included in video documentaries and in three hit theatrical productions, and his solo CD, Blues Alive!, released in 1998, was greeted by rave reviews and greatly increased the demand for his live performances at major blues and folk festivals. His newest CD, “It’s All Blues To Me!” was released in June of 2005, and his 1987 album, “Everyday Living,” featuring blues luminaries Charles Brown and Cool Papa, was rereleased on compact disc in 2005.
As a music educator, Hawkeye has taken his love of blues music to students of all ages at over 500 schools and over 1/2 million students, from pre-school to university campuses in 30 US states and 15 foreign nations through his enthusiastically received “Blues in the Schools” (BITS) programs, which he initiated in 1978, 48 years ago.