The Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival

November 13, 2010 by DaleR
Filed under: Blues History

I have attended this festival twice. It is located in West Helena Arkansas. It was the first festival I attended outside of St. Louis. It is a free festival and I was very impressed by the effort to which the local people had gone to make the towm ready for the festival. Like most small town downtown areas, West Helena has pretty much deserted. It was obvious that buildings had a fresh coat of paint and there were some shops set up in the vacant stores. There were a lot of venders set up along main street and some of the side streets. There were several small stages and one main stage.

The main stage was in a perfect location. It sat at the bottom of a large levee near the Mississippi River. Tbhe levee was tiered so that there was plenty of room for people to set up lawn chairs or put down blankets to sit on the ground. I spent most of my time at the main stage although the second time I went National Guitar Company had a display of their steel resonators and Catfish Keith was there to talk to the people and gave several demonstrations. They also gave away a National Steel Commerative guitar. By the way, if you haven’t picked this up yet, Catfish Keith is one of my favorite Blues performers.

I saw many great acts at these festivals. Some that stand out are Anson Funderburg and the Rockets featuring Sam Meyer, Robert Lockwood, Jr, bobby Rush and many others. For me, the main attraction at the second festival I attended was Roy Rogers. I have some of his CD’s and really enjoy his slide playing and singing. I was disappinted at the festival. I don’t know if it was the sound system or the usual live playing style of Roy Rogers but I really couldn’t hear the music. Everything just kind of melted together and produced noise rather than music. I would like to hear agin to see just how his music really sounds before forming any type of pemanant opinion. I have had the same experience with the North Mississippi Allstars.

Would I go back to the Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival. You bet. In a minute