Happy Traum’s presence as a member of the Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival’s faculty follows 50 years of experience as a guitar instructor, a vocation that occurred in tandem with performing and recording.

“These camps are the real way that folk continues,” Traum said. “People are playing one on one, face to face, and they are not looking at their computer screen. These camps are happening all over the country, where people are connecting musically in a very real way.”

Traum is teaching two classes at the workshop: blues and country fingerpicking, and “The Blues Guitar of Brownie McGhee,” a blues icon with whom Traum studied when he was starting out.

“It’s not modal, it’s more quasi-modal,” he said of a particularly tricky passage during Monday’s workshop. “Does that ring a bell for anybody?”

He has always had a desire to help people improve their performances. With this in mind, he formed Homespun Tapes, which offers more than 500 music lessons on DVDs, CDs, books and downloads; its products are distributed and sold around the globe. 

Throughout its 50-year history, Homespun has provided these lessons, which feature substantial instruction from artists, some of whom may have never taught before, such as Jefferson Airplane’s Jorma Kaukonen, Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and singer Maria Muldaur, who is also appearing at this week’s festival.

Traum said some of these musicians are great artists who never took the time to analyze what they do, and that, after a while, artists would come to him and ask to participate.

Traum was born in New York City, becoming part of the 1960s folk boom before moving to Woodstock, New York, in 1967. Now best known in conjunction with the 1969 music festival, Woodstock was then a small town that attracted like-minded musicians – including Bob Dylan.

When Traum spoke with The Leader, he had not yet gone through downtown Port Townsend, which shares an arts tradition with Woodstock. From his description, the towns share some of the same woes.

“Woodstock has become a destination point for people from New York City, and AirBnB has brought in a lot of new people,” he said. “There are all kinds of restaurants, so it’s easier to find a place to eat than find a place to live.”

Whether performing solo, with his brother or as a session musician, Traum has maintained Homespun as a way of providing income that was not dependent on the whims of promoters or the record-buying public.

“In the early 1960s, there was a whole cadre of people in New York City who felt we were at the forefront of this new acoustic music scene,” he said. “We went through all of the earth music, the roots music, like jug band music, blues and Appalachian music. We had a whole community of people who were into that early on.”

Traum said the music evolved into more topical areas; the folk of Dylan, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs and Buffy Sainte-Marie was followed by the blending of folk into rock with The Lovin’ Spoonful and The Byrds.

“We saw it incorporated into different things,” Traum said of 1960s folk music. “It has now evolved into a healthy, under-the-radar area where there is a healthy underground of people who really love this stuff and don’t care if they are on the pop charts.”

Traum performs at the festival’s Blues in the Clubs; at Beverly’s Hall, 1034 Water St., at 8 p.m., Friday; and at Key City Playhouse, 419 Washington St., at 10:30 p.m., Saturday. 

He also performs at the Acoustic Blues Showcase at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday at McCurdy Pavilion at Fort Worden. 

Much of the repertoire he is to play comes from his latest album, 2015’s “Just for the Love of It,” which includes a version of Bob Dylan’s “Down in the Flood.” Traum performed the song in a 1971 session with Dylan in a relaxed, acoustic format, to fill out a greatest hits album.

Traum said he hasn’t spoken to Dylan in about 15 years.

“These days, he’s more into Frank Sinatra than Pete Seeger,” he said of Dylan. “That’s fine with me. I love his old stuff and still think he’s an amazing artist.”

Tickets to the showcase range from $25 to $46, while a Blues in the Clubs armband costs $20 for each night. 

Traum, 79, finds his age liberating.

“What you get with age is that you don’t bother about where you are going because you’ve already been there,” he said.

“You can concentrate on what you like to do best without having to worry about the consequences. I want people to like me, but my life doesn’t depend on that, so I can relax a whole lot more.”