Friday, July 21, 2006
Celebrating blues
Add a little BBQ. Now you’ve got a festival.
John Maeder| Virginia Folklife Program
Nat Reese headlines the front porch stage
IO Jukebox
Tinsley Ellis
The Fat Daddy Band
Nat Reese
The New Roanoke Jug Band
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Festival details
- What: Blue Ridge Blues & BBQ Festival
- When: Saturday. Gates open at 11 a.m.; music from noon to 10:30 p.m.
- Where: historic Henry Street (1st Street N.W., Roanoke)
- Tickets are $15, $10 for Blues Society members. Kids 12 and under free. There is also a kids’ park with games, inflatable rides, face-painting and more.
“The blues isn’t always sad,” says Kerry Hurley. “There’s blues where people are celebrating life.”
And if all goes according to plan at the inaugural Blue Ridge Blues & BBQ Festival on Saturday, there will be plenty to celebrate.
The Blue Ridge Blues Society, started by Hurley, is hosting only the second festival on historic Henry Street since the Henry Street Heritage Festival moved to Elmwood Park about 10 years ago.
Proceeds from the event will be split evenly between the Blues Society and Total Action Against Poverty, which will direct its portion of the funds to renovating the old Hotel Dumas, a nationally registered historic site.
The festival, like the area’s revitalization, is an effort to bring music back to a neighborhood that once shook with the timbres of Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and James Brown.
“Henry Street was the Mecca of the black community,” said Heritage Festival director Rochelle Loritts, describing a vibrant downtown bustling with culture and commerce.
Hurley and Society Vice President Jeff Bland began planning the festival in January, a month before they chartered the BRBS, Roanoke’s first blues society.
The society has about 40 members and meets monthly for about a half-hour of discussion followed by an all-night blues jam.
Hurley, who hosts WROV’s blues show and sings for Roanoke’s Fat Daddy Band, was inspired by a magazine article, but he admits he was already fest-minded — the article was in his copy of Blues Festival Guide Magazine.
“If you want to see this kind of music survive ... get up off the couch and do something about it,” he said. “We just want to evoke the spirit of that area,” he said of Henry Street.
The day’s lineup includes 15 performing artists on two stages. Atlanta blues rocker Tinsley Ellis headlines the festival, capping the main stage roster, while Salem-born veteran Nat Reese headlines the Front Porch Stage — a stage that actually looks like a shotgun porch, complete with a tin roof.
Festivalgoers will be able to view video clips of classic blues artists in an interactive tent and enter a raffle for a Fender guitar signed by Buddy Guy, George Thorogood, Taj Mahal and Ellis.
And, of course, there will be lots of ’cue, something Hurley knows well from years of touring with his band.
“I’m a barbecue connoisseur, brother,” he said.
Next year Hurley plans to add a barbecue cookoff, where cooking teams will enter a judged contest for a culinary crown. That was the hope for this year until he learned the time it takes to organize an official cookoff, complete with sanctioning by the Kansas City Barbecue Society.
That’s just one in a list of things Hurley and his fledgling society have learned in their first go at event planning.
They also learned it’s expensive.
Hurley pegs the cost of the festival at about $15,000, half of which goes toward paying the bands. That sum also includes stages, tents, insurance and a host of other expenses, which Hurley spent the last few months scrambling to cover with donations.
Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times
“If you want to see this kind of music survive ... get up off the couch and do something about it.”
Kerry Hurley | Blue Ridge Blues Society
Add to that the responsibility of city permits and the frustration of gathering sponsors, and he and Bland quickly found their hands full.
Loritts commended the Blues Society for organizing the festival in a relatively short time, especially on Henry Street, which is not equipped with facilities like electricity or capacity parking.
“There was just no room. That was the biggest obstacle,” she said, recalling the first Heritage Festival. That festival moved to Elmwood Park about 10 years ago when its attendance outgrew Henry Street.
Then there’s the scary possibilty that hangs over every festival — rain.
More established events with bigger bankrolls can buy rain insurance, but that comfort is too pricey for the blues festival.
Yet even if the skies do their worst, the party could survive. Hurley estimates an attendance of about 1,000, but he said he would break even with about half of that.
And he’s expecting bigger things next year. While turning a profit would help the festival grow in 2007, having an entire year to plan will do wonders as well.
As for the crowd, Hurley knows the area has a blues community; he’s really hoping to perk up some new ears to the music.
“We’re spreading the gospel of the blues, brother. And we want to get some converts.”
Schedule
Main Stage
- Noon-12:45 p.m.The NewRoanoke Jug Band
- 1:15-2 p.m.Jackie B.& The Backburners
- 2:30-3:15 p.m.Mountain Frog
- 3:45-4:30 p.m.Deanie Blues Band
- 5-5:45 p.m.Tray Eppes Band
- 6:15-7 p.m.The Fat Daddy Band
- 7:30-8:30 p.m.Mel Melton& The Wicked Mojos
- 9-10:30 p.m.Tinsley Ellis
Front Porch Stage
- 12:45-1:15 p.m.Curley Ennis
- 2-2:30 p.m.Alabama Frank& Nancy Reid
- 3:15-3:45 p.m.Chickenwings & Gravy (aka Bill & Rich)
- 4:30-5 p.m.Stacy Hobbs
- 5:45-6:15 p.m.Jesse Ray Carter
- 7-7:30 p.m.Scott Perry
- 8:30-9 p.m.Nat Reese
