BY MAUREEN PARKER for WEEKLY VOLCANO | 8/14/2026
Make no mistake: When you’re someone who’s driven and wears a lot of hats, sometimes the stars align…and sometimes they don’t. But somehow, you always make a way. That’s especially true when you’re trying to coordinate with creative people. Schedules happen, life happens, but you make it work. So let me tell y’all about this man right here, who embodies this concept.
When I tell you there are people who consistently show up and show out for their community, I’m talking about jazz/blues guitarist Michael Powers. Around the Seattle-Tacoma area, he’s something of a local legend, a true showman who genuinely loves what he does. Powers splits his time between the Pacific Northwest and Arizona, but he’s here often enough that if you haven’t caught one of his performances…well…that’s on you. I’m just saying.
His musical origin story is layered, and honestly, it’s one of my favorites.
First of all, this man graduated from high school at 15 years old. I can’t even tell you what I was doing at 15, but I can promise it wasn’t graduating. He moved to Seattle shortly thereafter and went on to junior college to study psychology, before discovering there weren’t many job opportunities waiting for him. He later enrolled in Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts, graduating magna cum laude in 1982 with a BFA degree in composition and performance, focusing on music theory.
Like many of us who grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, Powers had what he jokingly calls an electronic babysitter. If you were around during the golden age of commercial jingles, every one of them is still living rent-free in your head. But while everyone else was just enjoying the songs for what they were, Powers was interested in specific details of them. Music was always playing in his home as well, and while soaking in the constant household soundtrack or just driving around and listening to 8-tracks, he’d notice the faint sounds bleeding through the recordings during the silent spaces between songs. Even as a kid, he was paying attention to the technology behind all of these different types of music.
Then life threw him a curveball. While skateboarding one summer in Berkeley, California, he found out the hard way that gravel and skateboard wheels don’t get along. He crashed, broke his wrist, and spent months in a cast, and the muscles in his arm began to weaken. During his recovery, he watched a film about Jimi Hendrix performing in Berkeley. Seeing Hendrix with the platform shoes, the bell bottoms, and the huge afro, he thought, “I’d like to do that.”
His doctor agreed that learning to play the guitar would be a great way to rebuild strength in his arm, so Powers headed to a pawn shop and bought his first one.
Around that same time, Berkeley honored the legendary B. B. King with his own day and presented him with the key to the city. As part of the celebration, King held a community event at the neighborhood library just down the street from Powers’s house.
By one of those incredible twists of fate, hardly anyone showed up. Which meant young Michael Powers got to spend time talking with B. B. King himself, one of his musical favorites. Powers proudly showed him his little pawn shop guitar and told him that one day he wanted to play like him. King picked it up and made that little guitar sing.
That day, Powers learned a lesson that musicians never forget: It’s not the instrument. It’s the player.
That lesson stayed with him for decades. After spending more than twenty years making a living as a professional musician, Powers wrote a song called “The Thrill Is Back,” a respectful nod to King’s classic, “The Thrill Is Gone.” Powers told me the song came from realizing that when most people spend twenty years at the same job, they retire with a gold watch. Musicians don’t get that luxury. They simply keep chasing the music because it’s who they are.
Now here’s where life decided to come full circle. Years after that first meeting at the Berkeley library, Powers was performing at Snoqualmie Casino, where B. B. King was also appearing. Powers handed King a copy of his CD and played him “The Thrill Is Back.”
B. B. King listened. He loved it. And then he did something Powers never expected: He remembered him.
Think about that for a second. A young boy once walked up to his musical hero carrying a pawn shop guitar and a dream. Years later, he came back as a professional musician with a song inspired by that same man, and B. B. King remembered meeting him all those years before. Some stories are simply meant to come full circle.
As he and I talked, Powers casually mentioned another astounding childhood memory, as life apparently wasn’t finished giving him unbelievable stories. When he was a child in the Bay Area, his mother used to call the police on one of their neighbors because he played music so loudly all the time. Years later, he was watching yet another documentary when he suddenly recognized that same neighbor.
“That’s my old neighbor,” Powers recalled. “The one with the beard. Jerry.”
It was Jerry Garcia, of course.
Now, if you’ve ever seen Powers perform, you already know he doesn’t simply play music. He puts on a whole show. I’ve always been fascinated by watching him, because he’s doing so much more than just playing a guitar.
He’s also been making his living as a professional musician since 1985, and anybody who’s ever tried to survive in this business knows that isn’t easy.
Independent musicians don’t just perform. They hustle. They adapt. They evolve. They figure out how to keep going year after year.
Years ago, while attending the Musikmesse trade show in Germany, Powers was introduced to the unique instrument that has become a signature part of his performances: his Frameworks guitar, made in Munich and consisting of a mahogany neck with an ebony fretboard, along with two curved, rubber-coated aluminum tubes that describe the outline of a guitar’s body. It’s kind of like a line drawing of a guitar that’s been made 3D.
One of the biggest advantages? The side frames of the guitar are detachable, and the whole thing fits in the overhead compartment of an airplane. If you’ve ever traveled with an instrument, you know that feeling of watching it disappear down the baggage belt and silently hoping it survives the trip. Powers doesn’t have to worry about that.
The sounds he creates with this instrument are incredible. During a single performance, he’s effectively playing 15 different instruments with his Frameworks guitar, creating layers of music that leave audiences wondering exactly how one person is doing all of that.
Knowing Powers, tomorrow, he may figure out how to add another one. Over the years, he’s shared stages and opened for acts like The Bus Boys and Yellowjackets during performances at UPS. That connection also circles back to Serni Solidarios, a musician I featured in an earlier article, proving once again how connected Tacoma’s music community really is.
Even after 40 years, Powers still keeps a busy performance schedule, and over the next few weeks, you can catch him playing at Festival Sundiata at the Seattle Center’s Mural Amphitheatre on August 23, Flight Path in Burien on August 27, Al Lago Ristorante in Sumner on August 29, Remedy Speakeasy in Bremerton on September 3, and The Mill in Milton on September 17…just to name a few. Go support local music. Go support local artists. You’ll be glad you did. Listen to Michael Powers’s music at michaelpowersmusic.com.
