Santos Puertas

Sant Just Desvern is eight thousand kilometres from the Mississippi, and an even greater mental and cultural distance away, yet Pere Puertas travelled it musically in his adolescence and was caught for ever by the music of African-American roots. In 1999 he founded, alongside his brother, one of the finest country blues duos in the country, and for more than two decades they became a benchmark for the genre, as proved by the second place they won at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis in 2013, and, the following year, by first prize in the competition run by the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society. After numerous trips to the southern United States, in 2012 he settled in Dallas and immersed himself in the local scene, only to return eight years later with a personal project under his new name, Santos Puertas, and a far more intimate and personal style, yet never losing sight of the blues, a music whose “complexity intrinsic to its simplicity” fascinates him. A brilliant guitarist and an excellent singer who is not valued highly enough, he has an enormous knowledge of the genre and radiates authenticity and a great respect for every style he plays, from the blues to rock, taking in rhythm&blues and American folk.