Joe Bethancourt

Joe Bethancourt passed away last Thursday, August 28th, 2014, at age 68. Joe had been a presence in fannish, SCA and especially folk music circles since the late 1960's.  In the SCA, he was known as Ioseph of Locksley, and was prominent in the founding of the Kingdom of Atenveldt (encompassing Arizona and bits of Utah and California).

But it was music that was his passion and profession. He was a master of many, many stringed instruments. He was a regular performer at the Funny Fellows club/restaurant for seventeen years, did work as a backup musician, and did numerous concerts and performances at various venues over the years, including a number of Phoenix-area SF conventions and some of the Glendale Public Library's "Live At The Library!" concerts. In recent years, he'd been passing on his skills as an instructor at Boogie Music in Phoenix.

Hilde and I had known Joe for a long time, caught a fair number of his performances over the years, and own most of the recordings he produced.  (Joe's various CD's and recordings are listed on his website, whitetreeaz.com. I'm assuming his family or friends will keep the website going for the foreseeable future. There are also quite a few videos of Joe on YouTube.)

We'll miss him.

This seems an appropriate video of Joe in performance:

(If the video doesn't play, here's the direct YouTube Link.)