Eureka Springs Blues Weekend

Eureka Springs is proud to announce that Blues Weekend has extended the event to a full week of great Blues, bringing in more mid-week visitors after adding feature shows to the event on Sunday three years ago to encourage even longer stays. Our headliners are Chris Thomas King and Jimmy D. Lane.

Grammy Award winner Chris Thomas King helped expose millions of movie-goers to the Blues as Tommy Johnson in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, the blockbuster hit starring George Clooney. The movie featured several songs performed by King, including a rendition of “Hard Time Killing Floor” that was recorded live during filming. King also starred as Ray Charles’s bandleader Lowell Fulson in the movie Ray, as Blind Willie Johnson in Soul of a Man and has appeared in the HBO series Treme.Born in Baton Rouge, King is the son of the late Swamp Blues musician and club owner Tabby Thomas. Chris played with his father, and helped run Tabby’s Blues Box and Heritage Hall, where he was exposed to and played with literally hundreds of blues acts over the years. King’s latest recording is “D2D” or “Direct to Disc”. As the title suggests, it was recorded direct to a master vinyl disc at the legendary Blue Heaven Studios in Salina, Kansas. It is as close as possible today to recreate the “sing into the can” recording experience depicted in “Oh Brother”, where the music is taken directly from the microphone to the master record which is then used to create the pressing plates.  As King wrote about the experience “Only my J-45 Gibson guitar, vocal, and the ethereal reverb from hallowed church walls, is etched into the 200-gram vinyl disc. “

Jimmy D. Lane is a Chicago bluesman, son of the legendary Jimmy Rogers. Like his father, Lane has traveled the world playing the Blues. His father was a singer, guitarist and harmonica player best known for his work with Muddy Waters, and then as a solo artist who recorded the hits “That’s All Right” and “Walking By Myself”. Lane has recorded and performed with a list of musicians too long to list here, but it includes his father Jimmy Rogers, B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Taj Mahal, Jeff Healy, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Lowell Fulson, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Stephen Stills, Van Morrison and David “Honeyboy” Edwards.

Jimmy performed on The Conan O’Brien Show and in dozens of countries around the world. He also performed for President Clinton and the First Lady in 1998. Jimmy was also the Music Director at Blue Heaven Studios from 1999 through 2005, where he helped establish the studio as one of the premiere analog studios in world. It has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, FOX News, CNN News and NPR Radio’s “All Things Considered”.

Other headliner and featured acts include The Bel-Airs, Earl & Them, Shawn Holt and the Teardrops, Kelley Hunt, Jimmy D. Lane, The Nace Brothers and The Noah Wotherspoon Band. Noah was this year’s Albert King Award winner at the International Blues Challenge, and will host fellow Albert King award winners Nick Schnebelen of Trampled Under Foot and Jonn Del Toro Richardson of Blue Mercy in a Tribute to Albert King.

We’ll also feature Free Music in Basin Spring Park with performances by Brick Fields, Doghouse Daddies, Isayah Warford & Friends, The Jones Brothers and Lucious Spiller. It begins on Saturday, June 13th at 5pm and Saturday, June 20th starting at Noon. 

We’ll also feature the winners of this year’s Ozark Blues Society of Northwest Arkansas Blues Challenge Buddy Shute and Amanda Rey & West Street Blues. And at noon on Saturday, June 20, we’ll give away 100 Hohner harmonicas to kids of all ages during our Blues For Kids Harmonica Workshop with George Hunt. Plus there will be blues music in all of our partner clubs featuring great local, regional and national acts. They include the Shari Bales Band, Brody Buster, Shannon Hope, Jeff Horton, Norman Jackson, Akeem Kemp, RJ Mischo, Patrick Sweany, Pete & Dave, Tightrope and many more great acts.In addition to the music, workshops will include “Basics of Blues Guitar”, “How To Build And Play A Diddly-Bow”, “Performance Photography”,  and “Writing The Perfect Blues Song”.

The weekend ends with a Father’s Day Blues Picnic at Turpentine Creek, on Sunday afternoon at 12 p.m. The afternoon starts with Brick Fields’s Gospel Blues Brunch.  Following will be Luscious Spiller & the Noah Wotherspoon Band.   To top off the day, musicians who performed during Blues Weekend will take the stage for a legendary Blues jam.  There will be food and drinks, arts and crafts, and fun activities for the kids.   Admission is only $5 per person at the gate.  Kids under six get in free.

For a complete schedule, tickets, lodging info and more, please visit www.EurekaSpringsBlues.com.