Deanna Bogart

As the lyrics to her aptly-titled song “Boogie Woogie Baby” suggest, Deanna Bogart has been traversing the globe, rocking those rails, and tickling the ivories for quite a while — the past 25 years, in fact. She describes her energetic style both on and off-stage as blusion, a melodic gumbo rooted in the blues styles born out of New Orleans, Kansas City, Chicago, and Memphis. That style can be heard on seven recordings including her most recent, Real Time (Blind Pig).

At a young age, Deanna gravitated towards her grandmother’s Baldwin piano. “I always felt right around music,” she remembers. “And I wanted to play. There were countless obstacles and painful experiences that would have absolutely discouraged me, had my desire not been so great. Luckily, the need outweighed the fear.”

At 20, Deanna began her professional career with a several-year stretch playing keys and sax in the Maryland-based band Cowboy Jazz, followed by a short tenure with screwball songwriter, Root Boy Slim. “A friend told me about a band that was looking for a girl who could sing harmony and play an instrument” she remembers. “They were like Bob Wills meets the Andrews Sisters meets the Grateful Dead,” she says of Cowboy Jazz. “I got the gig — but I was in no way ready for it on any level. It was the start of a journey trying to become the best musician I could be.”

At the end of the ’80s, Deanna struck out as a solo artist and built a following through years of incessant touring. These days, Deanna estimates that she and her Kurzweil PC88, Nord Electro 61, and Roland KC-350 amp are on the road roughly 200 days out of the year. “I actually love the road and touring, both the good days and the bad,” she says. “The older I get, the more of a curmudgeon I am about the accommodations, but the traveling — the new places and new faces, new experiences and new stories — is still as wonderful to me as ever.”

And fans and critics alike have taken notice. Over the years, Deanna has collected a mantle-full of accolades, including no less than 20 Washington Area Music Awards (a.k.a. “Wammies”) in such categories as “Best Group,” “Songwriter of the Year,” “Song of the Year,” and “Musician of the Year.” Music critics have slung about superlatives when describing Deanna, both dubbing her a “butt-kickin’ barrelhouse player that could give a good chase to old Jerry Lee,” and extolling her virtuosic piano stylings.

What’s the secret of her longevity? “Stubbornness, obliviousness, selfishness, selflessness, really loving to play music, and being endlessly intrigued and challenged by the entire process of making that happen,” she says. “There are always new highlights, and that’s part of the joy of my musical life.”