The one-day May festival at St. Joseph’s Whirlpool Centennial Park will also feature The Appleseed Collective, The Grascals and Albert Cummings. Get ticket information and details here.
Bringing Bluegrass to St. Joe: Yonder Mountain String Band (Photo/Anna Sink)
Another tasty lineup will grace the shores of Lake Michigan in downtown St. Joseph as the sixth annual BBQ, Blues & Bluegrass Festival takes over Whirlpool Centennial Park on May 19.
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On the Bill: Pokey LaFarge will also be part of the 2018 festival. (Photo/Anna Sink)
The festival — which has brought in bluegrass heavyweights such as Sam Bush, Greensky Bluegrass and The Infamous Stringdusters along with blues stalwarts Buddy Guy, Marcus King and Jonny Lang in its first five years — will be headlined in 2018 by jamgrass pioneers Yonder Mountain String Band and swinging Americana/blues artist Pokey LaFarge, who is a little bit bluegrassy himself.
Joining Yonder and LaFarge on the bill will be Ann Arbor’s genre-spanning Appleseed Collective, The Grascals and Albert Cummings.
The Grascals are three-time Grammy Award nominees and twice selected as the International Bluegrass Music Association entertainer of the year, while Albert Cummings has been wowing blues audiences for more than 20 years and will no doubt kick things off with a solid, feel-good groove.
A BLUEGRASS HEADLINER AND A ‘MEATIER LINEUP’
“The newest thing about this year’s festival is that after five years of having a blues headliner, we have a bluegrass headliner in Yonder Mountain and we are so excited to have them,” said Amy Zapal, executive director of St. Joe Today.
The Festival Schedule
“We really wanted to make this a meatier lineup and I think we’ve done that with the quality of the bands we are bringing in.
“We’ve always had great bands, but we are really excited about this lineup. Event manager Brian Smith really put his heart and soul into this.”
The festival, which has a capacity of 5,000, has a history of selling out. Pre-sale tickets, priced at $20, go on sale at 10 a.m. Thursday (March 1) and can be purchased online here, by phone at 269-927-1221 or in person at the Mendel Center, 2755 E. Napier Ave. in Benton Harbor or at the Welcome Center, 301 State St. in St. Joe. Kids 8 and under get in for free.
The Appleseed Collective. (Photo/Derek Ketchum)
As always, the festival will offer a wide range of food from BBQ to sushi to curry to everything in between, a few area wineries and beer from Barn Brewers Breweries, Tapistry Brewing, Round Barn Winery, Distilery & Brewery, Silver Harbor Brewing, Sister Lakes Brewing Company and possibly more.
Click here for more information on this year’s event, including do’s and don’ts, re-entry policies and vendors.
The festival is put on by St. Joseph Today and sponsored by Chemical Band and Trust and the Paul & Rose Suchovsky Charitable Trust.
VIDEOS OF THE FEATURED 2018 BANDS
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