Bobby Rutledge was born Robert Allen Rutledge Junior on July 11^th, 1971 at Providence Hospital in Everett, Washington, to parents Robert Rutledge and Earlina Lu Harrington. His father was a union truck driver and his mother an amateur country-western singer. The marriage did not last, and courts awarded full custody to Bobby’s father due to his mother’s neglect. Earlina’s family testified against her in court, and Bobby continued to maintain a long and close relationship with his mother’s family, most notably his Grandmother Minnie Lu Folansby, who played guitar and upright bass, encouraging Bobby’s musical interests during his stays with her in Cashmere, Washington.

      Bobby’s father struggled with the difficult life of a working single-parent, and remarried to Kathryn Rohr when Bobby was seven years of age, and the family moved from Lake City to the south-side Boeing suburb of Kent. It was in Kent that Bobby received his first and only formal guitar lesson, covering how to tune the instrument, though he was never allowed to practice on his Stepmother’s guitar. The next few years in Kent, Bobby’s parents started drinking and fighting  more frequently, and behavioral problems in school began to mar Bobby’s performance. Eventually the troubles at home led to attempted runaways, and chaotic years spent between staying with parents, Rutledge grandparents, and state receiving homes. These years also saw the beginning of a trend towards trouble with the law, and time spent in juvenile detention and youth camps. It was while staying at a state group home in 1986 that Bobby received his G.E.D. from Wenatchee Valley College. After his release, Bobby made an attempt at staying with his mother, Earlina, where he attended one semester at Skagit Valley College before withdrawing and running away again, but this time for good.

     Living on the streets of Seattle’s university district, Bobby taught himself to play guitar on street corners for tips, as an alternative to begging or thievery. Bobby learned to fend for himself during these years on the streets of Seattle, learning to treat street life as an alternative lifestyle. It wasn’t long before Bobby learned to hitchhike and hobo trains, and most of Bobby’s adult life was spent vagabonding, traveling across the West with rucksack and guitar. During these nomadic years Bobby worked at day labor agencies along his way, “jocked” rides for traveling carnivals, worked in the cook-shack for Circus Vargas, and even fished for cod in Alaska. Bobby wandered the expanse of the land, staying briefly in San Francisco, California, Idaho Springs, Colorado, Lincoln, Nebraska, and at times with his mother’s sister Pam in Spokane, Washington, and attending hippie-culture Rainbow Gatherings in the national forests of California, New Mexico, and Wyoming.

     On a trek to one such gathering in Missouri, Bobby made his first trip into America’s Deep South, staying briefly in New Orleans and Charleston before returning to the northwest to stay in Coeur D’ Alene, Idaho. When his father divorced Kathryn, Bobby was invited to return to Seattle where he learned the luthier’s guitar repair trade at Renton Technical Institute. Three years later, Bobby again decided to journey to the Deep South, as a hobo musician on a pilgrimage to the birthplace of Delta blues, Dockery’s Farm, and to find the grave of the Father of the Delta blues, Charley Patton.

     Bobby would settle in the Delta longer than anywhere in his life. Today, Bobby is a respected solo acoustic blues performer, having released his first independent album in 2003 and having finished a very successful first tour of Europe in the spring of 2005.

Things improved back home in these last years for Bobby's troubled family, but his recent heart-home in the Delta is characterized by warm friends, loyal supporters, appreciative audiences, rich history, loud laughter and deep music. And Bobby carries this music to Europe now...