2022 Crescent Metropolis Blues & BBQ Pageant brings music, smoked meat collectively in New Orleans | Louisiana Festivals

Like pink beans and rice, barbecue and the blues belong collectively.

Not like pink beans and rice, neither barbecue nor the blues are sometimes related to New Orleans.

The Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival has gone a good distance towards altering that notion.

With the fifteenth version of the free pageant set to fill downtown’s Lafayette Sq. Park this weekend, blues music — each homegrown expertise and visiting headliners — and an array of smoked and grilled meats will take middle stage.

Friday night is a kind of pageant appetizer, with solely two acts performing between 5:30 and eight:30 p.m. The fest absolutely kicks into gear on Saturday and Sunday with two levels alternating bands from 11 a.m. till after darkish.

Topping the roster are blues harmonica legend Charlie Musselwhite, award-winning blues and folks singer-songwriter Ruthie Foster and Louisiana-born guitarist and singer Robert Finley.

New Orleans- and Louisiana-based artists on the invoice embody Walter “Wolfman” Washington, Little Freddie King, Kenny Neal, Jon Cleary, Johnny Sansone, Mia Borders, Mem Shannon & the Membership and Eric Johanson.

The Crescent Metropolis Blues & BBQ Pageant is offered by the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Basis, the nonprofit that owns the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Pageant. Jazz Fest proceeds pay for the Blues & BBQ Pageant, in addition to different free festivals the inspiration produces all year long.

For 2022, the Blues & BBQ Fest returns to an in-person occasion following two years of pandemic-related disruptions. The 2020 pageant was offered as a digital pageant, dubbed “Blues Festing in Place,” broadcast by WWOZ 90.7 FM, the neighborhood radio station owned by the Jazz & Heritage Basis.

For these unable to attend in particular person this weekend, WWOZ will broadcast the pageant over the air and as a livestreamed video at www.wwoz.org. The livestream may even be obtainable on the Jazz & Heritage Basis’s Fb web page.

Basic admission is free. The VIP Expertise Go consists of seating at each levels in addition to entry to a second-floor lounge within the Blake Resort with a view of the pageant website, in addition to complimentary drinks. VIP passes are $250 plus service expenses, obtainable through www.eventbrite.com.

Along with music, the pageant options an arts market of twenty-two distributors promoting handmade paintings, furnishings and jewellery. Meals choices concentrate on regional barbecue types and replicate the burgeoning New Orleans barbecue scene. Some vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free meals choices may even be obtainable.

However music is the primary attraction, topped off by three headliners with rock-solid credentials.

Robert Finley, a local of Bernice, carried out on and off over the a long time whereas he supported himself with different jobs. In 2015, the Music Maker Reduction Basis, which assists musicians in want, began selling Finley and his tackle Southern soul and blues; the next yr, he launched his debut album, “Age Don’t Imply A Factor.” Dan Auerbach, of the Black Keys, subsequently produced two Finley albums launched through Auerbach’s label, Simple Eye Sound; the newest is final yr’s “Sharecropper’s Son.”

Finley and New Orleans pianist Jon Cleary & His Absolute Monster Gents are the pageant’s solely Friday performers.

The 78-year-old Musselwhite, Saturday’s headliner, was born in Mississippi and grew up in Memphis earlier than shifting to Chicago. He steeped himself within the metropolis’s blues scene and made a reputation for himself in the course of the Nineteen Sixties blues revival. He has showcased his torrid blues harmonica taking part in on dozens of his personal albums, in addition to on recordings by Bonnie Raitt, Tom Waits and INXS (that’s his harmonica on the opening of the INXS hit “Suicide Blonde”).

Saturday’s schedule is one thing of a Musselwhite household affair. Charlie closes the St. Charles Avenue Stage with a 7 p.m. set. His daughter Layla Musselwhite, a blues guitarist and singer whose Cosmic Gents band is predicated in New Orleans, opens the stage at midday.

Ruthie Foster, who closes down the 2022 Blues & BBQ Pageant with a Sunday set beginning at 7 p.m., hails from Austin, Texas. Mavis Staples, Bonnie Raitt and Aretha Franklin clearly influenced Foster’s highly effective but nuanced method to vocals and her medley of musical types, which encompasses not simply blues however gospel, folks and soul. On her most up-to-date album, 2020’s “Dwell on the Paramount,” she shares the stage with a giant band.

Hear Foster, and far more, at no cost this weekend. 

2022 CRESCENT CITY BLUES & BBQ SCHEDULE

FRIDAY, Oct. 14

5:30 – 6:45 p.m.: Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gents

7 – 8:30 p.m.: Robert Finley

SATURDAY, Oct. 15

St. Charles Avenue Stage

12 – 1 p.m.: Layla Musselwhite

2 – 3:15 p.m.: Mr. Sipp

4:30 – 5:45 p.m.: Kenny Neal

7 – 8:30 p.m.: Charlie Musselwhite

Camp Avenue Stage

11 a.m. – 12 p.m.: Wolfe Johns Blues Band

1 – 2 p.m.: Mem Shannon & the Membership

3:15 – 4:30 p.m.: Mia Borders

5:45 – 7 p.m.: Walter “Wolfman” Washington

SUNDAY, Oct. 16

St Charles Avenue Stage

12 – 1 p.m.: Eric Johanson

2 – 3:15 p.m.: Pleasure Clark

4:30 – 5:45 p.m.: Johnny Sansone

7 – 8:30 p.m.: Ruthie Foster

Camp Avenue Stage

11 a.m. – 12 p.m.: Kevin & the Blues Groovers

1 – 2:00 p.m.: DK Harrell

3:15 – 4:30 p.m.: Trudy Lynn

5:45 – 7 p.m.: Little Freddie King