A ndy Cohen grew up in a house with a piano and a lot of Dixieland Jazz records, amplified after a while by a cornet that his dad got him. At about fifteen, he got bitten by the Folk Music bug, and soon got to hear records by Big Bill Broonzy and the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, both of which reminded him of the music he grew up to. At sixteen, he saw Rev. Gary Davis, and his course was set. He knew he had it in him to follow, study, perform and promote the music of the southeast quadrant, America's musical mother lode.

Born in Massachusetts but a Southern boy at heart, Mr. Cohen has been playing music since before he was in kindergarten. As such, his "whole package" is both entertaining and true to the bone. His repertoire is largely borrowed from streetsinging geniuses across the South who spent the first half of the last century cadging among passers-by for dimes. And although he has published extensively on certain regional aspects of guitar picking, it is plain that he picks because it's fun.

Mr. Cohen has traveled around the U.S. and Canada for a generation and a half, collecting and playing these songs and tunes. Like his instruments, and like himself, they show the patina of age. Nonetheless, his repertoire is energetically presented, belying his advancing age.