Fingerstyle guitarists Brooks Robertson (left) and John Standefer (right), known together as "Brooks & John," will perform Jan. 10, at 7 p.m., at the Washburn Performing Arts Center in Washougal.
A well-known local musician will perform at the Washburn Performing Arts Center in Washougal Saturday, for the last time.
Fingerstyle guitarist John Standefer, a former Camas-Washougal area resident, will take the stage with Brooks Robertson at 7 p.m.
According to Standefer, he has decided not to perform at the Washburn PAC again due to increasing facility rental costs, in addition to the fact that its namesake — longtime friend Washougal High School Associate Principal Gordon Washburn — will be retiring this year.
“We won’t have our inside guy to run sound and help us out,” he said.
Standefer and Robertson, however, plan to make this last performance one to remember.
The duo will play a wide variety of music — from hymns and Chet Atkins classics to a Stevie Wonder tune and folk music.
“It is a very eclectic, wide open stylistic type of thing,” he said. “It jumps all over the place.”
Standefer, 64, and Robertson, 25, began playing and performing together in August 2012, and have since toured around the United States. They released their first collaborative album titled “We Came to Play,” and are currently working feverishly to complete a second.
Standefer, of Vancouver, has been playing fingerstyle guitar since he was a teenager. In 2002, he won the National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship held in Kansas and in 2004 he was the open division winner of the Home of the Legends International Thumbpicking Championship in Central City, Ky.
At the age of 14 Robertson, now a Portland resident, appeared on Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion,” where he won first place in a talent competition.
A self-described “funky fingerstyle guitarist,” Robertson won first place in the country category and second place overall in the 2010 Yamaha Six String Theory Guitar Competition in Los Angeles. Then, in 2012 he received the Horizon Award for young, up-and-coming guitarists by The National Thumbpickers Hall of Fame.
Standefer has performed annually at the Washburn Performing Arts Center, 1201 39th St., for the past 13 years.
Tickets to Saturday’s show can be purchased in advance for $15 each at www.johnstandefer.com, or for $17 at the door.
