Blues step aside in Helena for sampling of Americana
Helena-West Helena, known primarily among music fans as the home of the annual King Biscuit Blues Festival, will be the site of another musical gathering, although this one leans more toward the Americana side of the dial.
The inaugural Southbound Music Festival, which kicks off Friday and runs through Saturday, will bring roots music and Americana performers to the city’s historic downtown area. Texas troubadour Ray Wylie Hubbard will headline Friday’s lineup at the Malco Theater, 422 Cherry St., with his fellow Lone Star performer Lee Roy Parnell closing proceedings at that venue Saturday. In between, across five stages, will be performances from Blue Mother Tupelo, Dallas Alice, North Little Rock’s Adam Faucett, Mulberry Jam, The Cerny Brothers and many others.
For promoter John Mohead, this kind of festival is just an extension of music that first sprouted from the fruitful Arkansas Delta dirt.
All of the performers at this weekend’s festival “have an edge, and to me, that’s what Americana is,” Mohead says. “Delta blues is its own animal, but eastern Arkansas also produced the innovators of Americana, they just didn’t call it that. They called it country and rockabilly and rock.”
The progenitors to whom he’s referring are musicians such as Levon Helm, Johnny Cash and others.
“They all had this one thing in common. They had that edge, this angst,” Mohead says. “They all grew up poor and they wanted out. [Music] was their ticket out. It’s hardscrabble music, but they had fun doing it.”
Mohead, who lives across the Mississippi River from Helena-West Helena in Coahoma County, Miss., is the owner of Southbound Pizza, 233 Cherry St., which also serves as one of the festival’s venues. Other downtown performance spots are the Miller Hotel Stage, 223 Cherry St.; Bailee Mae’s Backside Club Stage, 209 Rightor St.; and the Crawfish Stage at Phillips and Cherry streets. For a complete schedule, check southboundmusicfestival.com.
Not surprisingly, the lineup is filled with acts Mohead admires. “They’re all bands I want to see,” he says.
Hubbard has been around since the early ’70s, when his song “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother,” was recorded by Jerry Jeff Walker. His most recent album, The Ruffian’s Misfortune, was released in 2015.
“He’s a legend,” Mohead says. “The older he’s gotten, he’s become like this guru, and he looks the part.”
Guitar-slinger Parnell was a country radio staple in the ’90s with hits from albums like Love Without Mercy, On the Road and We All Get Lucky Sometimes.
While Hubbard and Parnell have the Texas singer-songwriter angle covered, the festival offers plenty of other strains of roots music.
Blue Mother Tupelo, a husband and wife duo originally from North Carolina and now based in Nashville, Tenn., perform at 7 p.m. on Saturday and “mix these mountain hollers with Delta blues. And their harmonies, there’s something really special about their harmonies. It’s very rhythmic music,” Mohead says.
North Little Rock singer-songwriter Faucett, whose haunting vocals and lyrics can be found on stellar albums like 2014’s Blind Water Finds Blind Water and 2011’s More Like a Temple, hits the Malco stage at 7:15 Friday and the Crawfish Stage at noon Saturday.
Keyboardist Johnny Neel, who has played with the Allman Brothers Band, will perform at Bailee Mae’s Backside Club Stage on Friday, while The Delta Cultural Center will sponsor sets by Little Rock’s jazzy, soulful William Staggers and Mississippi folk gospel artist Reverend John Wilkins beginning at 3 p.m. Saturday.
Adding to the Southbound festivities will be a crawfish boil at — where else? — the Crawfish Stage on Saturday and a Cornhole Tournament that starts at noon Saturday in the parking lot at 302 Cherry St. A Kids Zone with slides, bouncy houses, a dunking booth and climbing wall also will be available Saturday.
It’s only the first edition of the festival, but Mohead’s goals are lofty.
“I would love to see this evolve into something like [Austin, Texas, mega-fest] South by Southwest, to attract music writers and record label people to watch these acts and start promoting them to the world from the banks of the Mississippi.”