Album Notes

'Acoustic Blues' has been nominated for Best Blues CD of the Year in the San Diego Music Awards 2004.

Slide guitar master Robin Henkel plays blues with a raw, gutsy, primative enthusiasm. 'Acoustic Blues' features Robin's deep renditions of the music of Fred McDowell, Robert Johnson and other bluesmen of the Mississippi delta. A couple of his original instrumentals and sexy duet with Annie Dru are also featured. All acoustic and all live in the studio, this is a very real, no studio tricks style recording. Robin commented " My CD release in 1999 'Highway' was four years in the making...'Acoustic Blues' was recorded in less than five hours...most songs were recorded with one take."

Since 1979 Robin Henkel has had seven music releases (CD, cassette, and vinyl).

Robin has opened shows for Dizzie Gillespie, John McLaughlin, Bonnie Raitt, Dr. John, Roy Rogers, Arlo Guthrie, Hot Tuna, Steve Stills, Dave Mason, Nichollette Larson, Todd Rundgren, Harvey Mandel, Tim Weisberg, Don McLean, Charles Brown.

Robin has performed with: John Hammond, Eddie Kirkland, The San Diego Symphony, Lowell Fulson, Johnny Almond, Buddy Miles, Big Jay McNealy, Jimmy Witherspoon, Sha Na Na, Papa John Creach.

Newspaper quotes:

Robin Henkel is a futurist and a historian.
--LA Times

Henkel is already playing a shuffle that is neither slow nor fast--a strut, and it is extremely seductive...Henkel proceeds to play a fast jump progression, much like one of Robert Johnson's fiery paced songs.
As with Johnson, it is hard to imagine, if you close your eyes, that there is only one guitarist at work. You can almost hear the scratches on the 78.
--San Diego Reader

Robin's live shows are nothing short of inspirational. There is somthing genuinely raw, base and animalistic about his gut-wrenching, honest music.
--360 Degrees

"I like playing music", he says. It just feels good. Henkel's strength is when he picks up that sawed-off pipe fitting and puts it on his baby finger and then lays it on the strings of a resonator or Dobro. All of a sudden the awkward kid from Serra Mesa is transformed into the man in the corner at the Delta house party who commands everyones attention. When Robin plays slide guitar, he steels the show. You probably haven't seen anything like this for years and you may not see it again anytime soon.
--Mike Kinsman, San Diego Union/Tribune

Shit on the head!