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This weekend, Portlanders will flood Tom McCall Waterfront Park as the annual Waterfront Blues Festival, which has rebounded robustly post-COVID-19, resumes.
“It feels like this festival is more important and needed than ever,” festival director Christina Fuller tells WW. “[We want to] bring back Portland and celebrate what is going and welcome summer and do all of the things that make Portland magical and really a hub for arts and culture.”
Spread across four stages covering 8 acres of the the park, the festival will take place July 1-4, and has enlisted blues icons (like Buddy Guy and Curtis Salgado), but also features some surprising artists.
“Something we take a tremendous amount of pride in at the Blues Festival is honoring the legacies of the legends of the genre, but being pretty darn loose in our interpretation of what can be at a blues festival,” Fuller says. “So we’ve got Americana and funk and soul and gospel and a little bit of everything.”
Among Fuller’s most anticipated performers is Lo Steele, a 2022 WW Best New Bands honoree and the daughter of LaRhonda Steele (the “First Lady of Portland Blues” and Oregon Music Hall of Fame inductee).
“Lo and her sister have been playing at the festival with their mom since they were little kids,” Fuller says. “This year, Lo Steele has her own set and her own band. And the story of growing up in the festival and the future of blues and the multigenerational [narrative] of music in Portland is such a cool story. That feels so hopeful.”
Tickets for the festival are available at waterfrontbluesfest.com ($50 single day, $140 and up for all four days).