Octavia, who will be performing at the Mid-Winter Blues Fest at the Lancaster Arts Hotel Friday night with her group, the Earthblood Blues Band, comes from quite the musical family.

Two aunts sang for the Czar and Czarina of Russia. Her mother was a concert pianist. A cousin is the conductor for Concerto Soloists in Philadelphia.

"I'm the black sheep in the family who plays the other stuff," she says with a laugh.

That other stuff is the blues, which she said spoke to her when she was a teen growing up in Philadelphia.

Why the blues?

"It's all feeling," she says. "Some people get their feeling from classical, or opera or country, soul, hip hop. It's what really floats your boat. I have been sailing the blues wave. It feels right, it feels good."

Octavia is a triple threat, singing, playing bluesy finger-style guitar and a sizzling harmonica.

It's the harmonica that truly floats her boat.

"I play harmonica with my eyes shut," she says "I am going some place."

She started playing when she was a teenager back in the 1960s, after hearing Bob Dylan.

"There was something incredibly magic between that instrument and myself," she says. "Early on, I realized the ear I have. I didn't want to sound like other harmonica players. No disrespect to the others, but I wanted to find my own way, my own sound, my own riffs."

But she did sit in with as many bands as she could. It wasn't always easy.

"People thought women don't play this instrument," Octavia remembers, adding with a laugh, "And I am not only a woman, but I'm short, fat and white. I'd say, 'Hi, I play the harmonica,' and people would laugh."

But then they heard her play.

"Once they heard me, they knew," she says. "Then it became a non-issue."

That's how she got to tour with Etta James.

"She was playing at the Keystone in Berkeley and when I realized she was there, I ran out to my car and got my harmonica, got on stage and played. She handed over the microphone and from there, I toured with her."

She's also opened for B.B. King, Mavis Staples, Taj Mahal and Delbert McClinton, among others.

Octavia always knew music would be her life and she knew that meant she'd have to learn to sing, something she never thought she was very good at, from the time her mother pushed her out on stage at age 5.

But she took singing lessons (from Bette Midler's vocal coach) and her voice opened up.

"Especially jazz," she says. "Blues is more textured, it's different. But with jazz I do a lot of torch songs. I love it."

And, she notes with a laugh, she's got a loud voice.

In the mid-1980s, she decided to go to England, and played on the street, with her guitar case open.

"People would tell me they could hear me across town, they could hear me over a bus," she says. "I stayed for two years and managed to pick up a husband and a son."

She came back to this area and settled down, raising her son and a daughter that came along four years later.

"While they were in diapers, I wasn't going anywhere," she says."But then I got back out and started my music."

Her bandmates in Earthblood include guitarist Bill Wasch and drummer Jack Covert, who she's been playing with for years. Also sitting in at Friday's show is bass player Vinnie Hunter, who Octavia says she's known for about 15 years.

"We'll mostly be sticking with the blues," she says. "I really do try to cater to the venue and audience's needs and this is a blues fest. We want them to feel good. That's the bottom line to all my music. Spread the feel-good around. We could all use that right now."

THAT'S THE TICKET

Mid-Winter Bluesfest featuring Octavia

Mitch Lyons, clay monoprints

Fri. 5-9 p.m.

Lancaster Arts Hotel Gallery

300 Harrisburg Ave.

431-3277 or 866-720-2787
www.artshotelgallery.com