Few festivals bring out the blues like the Beale Street Music
Festival, which took place last month in
Memphis and is considered
to be one of the biggest and best known. But how many of you have
popped in on the Long Beach Blues Festival? The 23rd annual Labor
Day weekend gathering cranks up the amps smack dab in the middle of
the Cal State University Long Beach campus. This outdoor
get-together relies on a single stage to entertain the 15,000 folks
who turn out to see such blues notables as Dr.
John, Etta James,
Ike Turner, Ben E. King, Otis Rush, and Arthur Adams.
Leave it to Music City, USA, to host the trademarked World's
Biggest Country Music Festival. For the 31st time, the streets of
Nashville will be filled with musical acts, fans, media folk, and
everything in between, all schmoozing, boozing, and cruising to the
best that country music has to offer. The annual occurrence, known
as Fan Fair, runs June 13-16, with the majority of the headliners
playing the 60,000-seat Adelphia Coliseum. Already booked are
Brooks & Dunn, since Gill, Lee Ann Womack,
Alan Jackson, Blake
Shelton, Sara Evans,
Kenny Chesney, and Diamond Rio, to mention but
a few.
The four-day Country Jam USA starts in Grand Junction, Colorado,
June 27-30, then rolls on into Eau Claire,
Wisconsin, July 18-20.
The lineup for each location depends on the artists' summer-tour
schedules. This year's Grand Junction lineup, for example, includes
Kenny Chesney, Lonestar, Sara Evans, Rhett Atkins, and Clay Walker.
More than 120,000 attendees can't be wrong.
We're all aware that
Chicago's got the blues, but on June 29-30,
the Windy City kicks up its heels for the 12th annual Chicago
Country Music Festival, which expects to draw approximately 300,000
music lovers. Overshadowed only slightly by the popular Taste of
Chicago (with an expected 3 million in attendance) going on
simultaneously, the tuneful extravaganza runs all day long in Grant
Park on two main stages featuring the best in country, bluegrass,
Cajun, and western swing music.