Buddy Guy to Headline Fourth Annual Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival

Free festival in Lafayette Square Park features the best in Southern music, food and art.

Buddy Guy, Bobby Rush, Irma Thomas, Sonny Landreth, T-Model Ford and many other greats in blues and R&B will perform at the fourth annual Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival, a free event presented by the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation.

The festival takes place on Saturday, Oct. 17, and Sunday, Oct. 18, in New Orleans' Lafayette Square Park, with music on two stages, a crafts fair and the best barbecue in the South.

The complete schedule of performances, plus performer bios and the roster of food and art/craft vendors, is online at crescentcitybluesfest.com.

Parking is available at the Poydras Center Garage (650 Poydras Street) starting at 10 a.m. on both days of the festival. The fee for parking is $10.

Now in its fourth year, the Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival is growing into a major attraction on the American blues circuit.

"The blues is at the heart of all American music," said Judge Ronald J. Sholes, president of the Jazz & Heritage Foundation's Board of Directors. "It's important that the influence of the blues should be recognized in the birthplace of jazz. We're proud to showcase our home-town artists as the world-class talents that they are while also bringing to New Orleans some of the biggest names in blues."

The Jazz & Heritage Foundation is also presenting two additional events in conjunction with the Blues & BBQ Festival:

On Friday, Oct. 16, folk legend and new New Orleans resident Richie Havens will perform at the Howlin' Wolf (907 S. Peters St.) in a concert to raise funds for the Foundation's free after-school music program, the Don Jamison Heritage School of Music . Tickets are $20 and may be ordered online.

On Monday, Oct. 19, the Jazz & Heritage Foundation will present the latest in its Tom Dent Congo Square Lecture Series. Charles Keil, an ethnomusicologist and author of the ground-breaking 1966 book "Urban Blues," will speak on the various meanings of the term "blues" through the ages. The lecture is free and open to the public; it starts at 7 p.m. at the Jazz & Heritage Center. More information on this event.

The Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival is one of several new, free festivals launched by the Jazz & Heritage Foundation as part of an on-going effort to support the region's artists and cultural economy. Others include the Congo Square Rhythms Festival, Fiesta Latina , the Tremé Creole Gumbo Festival and the Louisiana Cajun-Zydeco Festival.

The winner of the New Orleans Blues Society's "Voodoo Blues Challenge" will be our special guest performer on October 18. The winner will be selected October 10th at the Mid City Lanes Rock 'n' Bowl in the third and final round of this battle-of-the-New-Orleans-blues-bands contest sponsored by the society (also known as the Voodoo Blues Krewe). The winner will perform in January at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis.

As in years past, the Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival is being held in conjunction with Walk The Beat, a five-kilometer run/walk sponsored by the New Orleans Police & Justice Foundation — a non-profit that raises money to support the New Orleans Police Department. Walk The Beat will be held at 9am on Saturday, Oct. 17, starting from Lafayette Square Park. For registration information, please visit the New Orleans Police & Justice Foundation website.

Portions of the Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival will be broadcast live on radio station WWOZ (90.7 FM) and wwoz.org. Football fans will be able to see the Oct. 18 game between the New Orleans Saints and the New York Giants on a large-screen TV at the festival.

The Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival gratefully acknowledges the following sponsors:

Miller Light
Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation & Tourism
Arts Council of New Orleans
Cox Communications
Gambit
International House Hotel
Louisiana Division of the Arts
Lamar Advertising
LSU Health Care Network
New Orleans Police & Justice Foundation
OffBeat
Peoples Health
River Parish Disposal
Whole Foods
WWOZ Radio
Zande+Newman Design

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation, Inc., is the nonprofit organization that owns the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival presented by Shell . The foundation uses the proceeds from that world-famous festival, plus other funds, for year-round programs in the areas of education, economic development and cultural events. Find out more about what we do. Assets of the foundation include the Jazz & Heritage Archive, the Jazz & Heritage Center and radio station WWOZ.

You can support the mission and activities of the Jazz & Heritage Foundation. Click here to find out how.

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