The Summer Blues Festival will explode on the scene on Aug. 5 with an exciting mix of blues stars and emerging local blues talent, local talent that may just keep the pros scrambling to keep up.
Last year's festival ran on eight Saturdays through July and August. This year, with an even stronger line-up of artists, the festival will be focused on Saturdays and Sundays through August at Harbourfront Square (in front of the downtown library) with three shows on Saturday at 2 p.m., 4:30 p.m., and 6 p.m. and one show at 2 p.m. on Sunday. Saturday's 4:30 p.m. show will spotlight the best of our emerging local talent.
David Gogo, multiple Maple Blues award winner, will headline the festival's opening weekend. His show gets underway at 6 p.m. on Saturday. Michael Pickett, the award winning Delta Blues, Country, Folk, and Americana singer/songwriter, will open the festival at 2 p.m. and Andrea Smith, a Malaspina jazz student will be spotlighted at 4:30 p.m. Reminiscent of Big Mama Thornton, Aretha Franklin, and Etta James, Summer and the Sinners will wrap up the first festival weekend with her 2 p.m. show on Sunday.
The 2006 Summer Blues Festival is a free concert series. You are invited to bring your own chair so you can sit back, relax and enjoy the music ... or dance your shoes off.
Here is a quick overview of the rest of the festival schedule.
SATURDAY AUGUST 12
2 p.m. -- The Twisters
4:30 p.m. --- Victoria's Layla Zoe
6 p.m. -- Lester Quitzau.
SUNDAY AUGUST 13
2 p.m. -- EMI recording artist, Murray Porter
SATURDAY AUGUST 19
2 p.m. -- Ted Williams
4:30 p.m -- Love in Vain, featuring the offspring of some of sa国际传媒's most exciting musicians
6 p.m. -- Gene Hardy, sa国际传媒's foremost R&B saxophonist
SUNDAY AUGUST 20
2 p.m.-- The Midnights, a twelve piece motown and soul dance band
SATURDAY AUGUST 26
2 p.m. -- Ken Hamm, our own West Coast musical genius guitarist and banjo player
4:30 p.m.-- Blueskool, from the acclaimed Woodlands Jazz Band
6 p.m.-- Jimmy Bowskill, a teenage Robert Johnson who also plays harmonica, bass, banjo and piano.
SUNDAY AUGUST 27 -
2 p.m. - Bill Johnson, although he's from Victoria, he's become Nanaimo's favourite blues singer