Thunder Bay Blues Festival Preview

Admit it - you're glad it's Ana Popovic and not Big Walter Smith

Culturally speaking, the Thunder Bay Blues Festival may well be the greatest success in the forty year history of its host city, in terms of annual short-run events. If the 9th Annual Festival, opening at 5PM this evening at Marina Park, is at like its eight predecessors it will feature absolute A list performers, electric sharp new acts, and well-behaved crowds that rise on the hills surrounding the yellow-and-white striped show tent, colourful T-shirts and hats mixing with the colours of a hot summer’s sunset clouds. Artistic success. Audience success. The swwet spot of the entertainment industry.

Perhaps best of all, the Thunder Bay Blues Festival has become very much a communal event, the sort that its people thrive in. At the very first Blues Festival, I remember chatting with former Mayor Ken Boshcoff - very much a powerful supporter of the Blues Festival from Day One, I might add. Boshcoff made the point, and I remember it vividly, that Thunder Bay could call itself the City of Festvals, for at that point there were 18 of them. From Dragon Boats to Italian Festivals to St. Urho, as a city we do run the gamut. And clearly they resonate with the Northwestern Ontario persona. With an annual attendance of 15,000, the Thunder Bay Blues Festival resonates like a well-plucked electric bass.

I idly asked on Facebook what people were most looking forward to at this year’s Festival. You would think it would be the beyond-legendary guitar maestro Taj Mahal, or perhaps Ana Popovic from that legendary Delta town of - um - Belgrade. Don’t laugh. Well, go ahead, but my gut instinct is that Popovic is going to be the hot act like David Gogo a few years ago. The one that leaves the audience talking about them.

You would think it would be the music, but it’s not. It’s the people, the community, the faces that are seen each year beneath the same flag in the same flat beach chair in the same spot since the days when Big Walter Smith was still just Little Wally Smith. It’s as though the town picnic from some Thornton Wilder piece has come to life next to a brilliant and cooling Lake Superior with a soundtrack of Jack Daniels fueled hurt, anger and loss. Sounds like a party to me, and 14,999 others.

Full credit always must go to Bob Halvorsen’s well-trained crew at the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium. Halvorsen has become a master booker, able to maintain the balance between audience comfort with older acts and audience excitement over new acts. And the wily veteran stage crew led by Rob Jardine on sound can handle with ease he many different styles and weather conditions tossed at them in short order.

The Chronicle-Journal will be reporting each day from the Blues Festival. Do stop by and share any thoughts or memories. I’m easy to spot. I’ll be the one hauling a laptop about in a black case on a hot day. Be seeing you!