San Diego Blues Festival September 7th
Blues great Charlie Musselwhite will perform at the 3rd Annual Blues Festival.
The 3rd Annual San Diego Blues Festival comes to Embarcadero Marine Park North on Saturday, September 7 with an all-day show that will feature three members of the Blues Hall of Fame – Charlie Musselwhite, Billy Boy Arnold and Jody Williams – playing the festival, along with many more of today’s most exciting blues performers. Gates will open at 10:30 a.m. This is a benefit performance for the Jacobs and Cushman San Diego Food Bank, and tickets are a very reasonable $15, plus two cans of food for the needy.
As Charlie Musselwhite is fond of saying, the blues overtook him when he was a child. At 69 that hold has never loosened. Musselwhite and his family moved to Memphis, Tenn., when he was three, where he immersed himself in the blues music that he seemed to hear everywhere he went. By the time he was in his teens he had earned the blues nickname “Memphis Charlie” and would hang around on Beale Street watching closely as street singers or bluesmen such as Furry Lewis, Will Shade or Earl Bell cast their blues spell.
Through the years, Musselwhite’s musical taste has continued to expand. He has collaborated with such diverse musicians as Tom Waits, the Blind Boys of Alabama, John Lee Hooker and Eddie Vedder. This year, Charlie and rock star Ben Harper collaborated on “Get Up!” Despite his protests of being a simple blues musician, Musselwhite has always kept his ears open and built a musical career that is filled with tradition as well as innovation. His blues has always been fresh and filled with feeling. Perhaps that’s why he has seven Grammy nominations, his own marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail and was named to the Blues Hall of Fame in 2010.
Rounding out the bill at the San Diego Blues Festival will be Billy Watson & His Submarine Trio, The Tighten Ups, Bill Magee Blues Band, Billy Boy Arnold & Jody Williams, Lucky Peterson, featuring Tamara Peterson, The Fremonts, Nikki Hill, Eden Brent and Dave Alvin’s Downey Blues All-Stars. Music will be continuous from 9:30 a.m. until Musselwhite’s 6:45 p.m headliner performance. There are two stages at the festival with overlapping acts so you can wander from one to the other at your leisure.
When the San Diego Blues Festival was founded in 2011, it had a simple mission, to provide great blues music at an affordable price and raise money to support the battle against hunger in our community. Since then, the Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank has shared some of the best blues musicians going today with an appreciative and growing audience. In the festival’s first two years, sponsors and festival goers have helped contribute more than seven and one-half tons of food and more than $100,000 to help the Food Bank fight hunger in San Diego County.
To reserve tickets, see the festival website at http://sdbluesfest.com/about/ where you can purchase, download and print your tickets. Gates will open at 10:30 a.m. for early admissions. All others will be allowed in at 10:45 a.m. Billy Watson & His Submarine Trio will be playing outside the front gate beginning at 9:30 a.m. The San Diego Trolley stops two blocks from the venue. No food, coolers, drinks or alcohol may be brought into the venue, and video cameras and audio recorders of all kinds are prohibited.
Category: Entertainment
