Image by: Kati Garner
The scruffy guy onstage at the Crest Theatre Friday evening was bantering with the piano technician. He looked like he might have wandered in off the downtown streets looking for a spare-change handout.

In worn jeans and work shirt, ball cap pulled down over an unruly fringe of dark hair, George Winston spoke with The Sacramento Press before his ”Summer Show.” Image by: Kati Garner

Grammy-winner Winston is known for his low-key approach to concerts. Before the photo shoot, he changed into his performance clothing: blue jeans, a sage green long-sleeved cotton shirt and gray wool socks, no shoes. He removed his cap and joked about not having gotten a haircut for the gig, sporting what he called his “Manson look,” and asked if he was presentable enough.

His guitar case looked like it had traveled 10,000 dusty roads to get here, in stark contrast to the shiny rented 9-foot Steinway grand he prefers to play. He neatly arranged a small square of sheepskin near his guitar case and adjusted the microphone stand, noting that he always brings his own stand so that “if something goes wrong, I know how to fix it.”

He chatted a bit about the different qualities a particular hall or audience can bring to the music, noting that a cough or a sigh from the audience can add a new dimension to a song or can “bring you into the room” in a recording. Winston often ends his songs with a 30-second fadeout into silence, so that at the end he can hear his own breath.

At the Crest, the audience of about 350 fans was absolutely silent until the last note of each song faded away and Winston finally lifted his bald and bearded head to allow the applause to wash over him.

In two sets, Winston covered each of his favorite genres in a smooth and mesmerizing show. From the exuberant stride piano of Fats Waller’s “Cat and Mouse” to the liquid riffs and rills of the early spring evoked in “Rain,” there was not a song that left the audience unsatisfied. The lovely, stately “Variations on Pachelbel’s Canon” was sandwiched between the surprise of a complex harmonica solo and a wonderful bluesy stride piece called “The Gulf Will Live Again.”

Winston also played some of his beloved Hawaiian slack-key guitar.

Image by: Kati Garner

Winston is an anomaly, a solo artist who has sold millions of albums on three different labels but has never drifted into star-performer mentality, so at odds with his very personal interpretation of the music. He writes, interprets, arranges and plays music that he loves and that speaks to him on a deeply personal level.

The artist gives the impression of being so involved with his music that it wouldn’t matter to him if he were playing to an audience of 3,000 or 300 or just a handful of friends gathered in his Santa Cruz home. It is the music that matters to this humble man.

In his years with William Ackerman’s Windham Hill Records, Winston demonstrated a distinctly original style of piano he called “rural folk piano.” It is this haunting piano work that comprises his bestselling albums, “Autumn,” “ December” and “Winter Into Spring,” in which each piece presents the flavor, images and memories associated with the particular season. Another series evokes the mental and emotional geography of place: “Forest,” “Plains” and “Montana: A Love Story.”

One of Winston's trademarks is using his left arm to mute the piano strings during a song. (Image by: Kati Garner)

Another trademark is not wearing shoes while playing so that his feet marking the beat are not heard (Image by: Kati Garner)

Yet Winston also harbors a deep love and appreciation of the stride piano style of Fats Waller, Earl Hines and Teddy Wilson, piano greats of the 1920s and ‘30s. He has interpreted and recorded music of The Doors and of jazz great Vince Guaraldi of the “Peanuts” soundtracks fame.

On Winston’s own label, Dancing Cat Records, he has made many recordings celebrating the New Orleans R&B piano style of Professor Longhair, Doctor John and Henry Butler. The Dancing Cat label is also home to many recordings of Hawaiian slack-key guitar music.

Winston has also released two benefit albums, “Remembrance - A Memorial Benefit,” which was released shortly after the 9/11 tragedy, and “Gulf Coast Blues & Impressions: A Hurricane Relief Benefit” in 2006.

In Sacramento, Winston  finished his slack-key guitar encore and bowed humbly to the second standing ovation, then picked up his battered guitar case and shuffled off the stage, once again a simple scruffy hobo resuming his wandering ways.