It’s the Biscuit, baby: Blues festival number 36
Seven-time Blues Music Award winner Ruthie Foster, Nick Moss and his band, and Tab Benoit, backed by The Big Easy’s Dirty Dozen Brass Band, are the headliners for the 36th King Biscuit Blues Festival, taking place Wednesday-Saturday in Helena-West Helena.
Judging from last year’s crowd when the festival made its postcovid reappearance, these musicians can expect a massive and rapt audience.
As stated on its website, the King Biscuit Blues Festival — which goes back to its founding in 1986 — “is one of the nation’s foremost showcases of blues music.” Held for three days in October (plus the bonus “Warm Up Wednesday” the evening before), it causes tens of thousands of blues enthusiasts from all over the world to converge on “historic downtown Helena, Arkansas, to hear stirring and uplifting performances of an American art form on the banks of the Mississippi River.”
Newbies are informed that the festival’s name stems from “King Biscuit Time,” billed as “the longest-running daily radio show.” The event takes place on multiple stages — the Sonny Boy Williamson Main Stage at 116 Cherry St., along with the Bit-O-Blues, Lockwood-Stackhouse, Front Porch and Cedell Davis stages — and a Gospel stage.
Foster performs on Thursday, while Moss and his band are up on Friday and Benoit and company play on Saturday.
The festival’s Friday lineup on the Main Stage also includes blues and festival veterans Reba Russell and Paul Thorn, along with Moss. On the schedule for Saturday: Anson Funderburgh, the only performer to have appeared at every King Biscuit festival; Sonny Landreth; and Kenny “Beedy Eyes” Smith with Bob Stroger and Bob Margolin.
Among the many other blues performers from around the country and the world coming to the Mississippi River town on Arkansas’ eastern edge: Robert Finley and the Jimbo Mathus Band on the Lock
wood-Stackhouse Stage on Friday, and the Robert Kimbrough Sr. Blues Connection, Saturday on the CeDell Davis Memorial Stage. (Chicago blues legend James “Tail Dragger” Jones, who’d been slated to appear, died Sept. 4.)
In addition to the stage performers, buskers — street musicians — will be there to entertain the crowds. Also featured: the Tour da Delta Bike Ride, Flour Power 5K Run, a VIP party and a “Kansas City-sanctioned” barbecue contest. There will be about 20 food vendors, including two seafood purveyors, along with arts-and-crafts vendors; visitors will also have a chance to shop in the establishments downtown.
Deemed “a colorful highlight of the festival” is its “Call and Response: Blues Symposium,” the 11th of which will take place from Saturday in the Malco Theater on Cherry Street. Blues journalism and preservation legends Roger Stolle and Don Wilcock will moderate two hourlong “back fence” conversations with blues musicians and personalities. Part One, 10-11 a.m., features harmonicist and bandleader Charlie Musselwhite and guitarists Kent Burnside and Mathus. Part Two, 11:15 a.m.12:15 p.m., features festival executive director Munnie Jordan, along with singer/guitarist and Blues Hall of Famer John Primer; Moss; and award-winning harmonicist Dennis Gruenling.
But wait — there’s more. The festival offers a raffle, with tickets for sale 2-4 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday in the Main Stage gated area. Raffles include two guitars designed by Michael Gauf — Painted Axe; overnight stays sponsored by the Peabody Hotel in Memphis; and a King Biscuit Blues Festival poster, signed by the artist.
The festival made its triumphant comeback in 2022 after covid halted it the previous two years.
This being its second year back from covid, planning went “much, much better,” Jordan says. “Last year we were just trying to pull it all back together, and this year we’re just in the swing, just like old times. Everybody knows what they’re doing.”
Although the 2022 crowd was considerable, organizers don’t have hard numbers to compare it with pre-covid attendance.
The only stage they sell tickets for is the Main Stage, Jordan notes. “We usually say, over the four-day period, we have close to 20,000 people that are town, moving around,” she says.
The Main Stage area holds “like 8,000 if it’s really, really crowded.” She recalls that the year the late B.B. King played that stage, “yes. It was packed. You could not move.”
Again, some of the festival’s highlight performers are, not surprisingly, festival veterans. Take Foster, “who we love,” Jordan says. A Gause, Texas, native with a church background, and a three-time Grammy nominee, Foster last appeared at King Biscuit in 2019; she brought with her the University of Arkansas Inspirational Chorale “and it was unbelievable. … She’s just a great entertainer.” Then there’s Thorn — “We love him.”
Benoit (winner of multiple Blues Music Awards) and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, she adds, “should be very exciting because there’ll be a lot of horn and brass instruments. … But then the other stages have [acts] just as good.”
As lodging in the area is limited and fills up quickly, many festivalgoers “commute” from lodging in Clarksdale or Robinsonville, Miss., or Forrest City; the festival website offers a list of hotels, motels and Airbnbs in these areas as well as the ones nearby. Attendees can also camp at the festival’s Tent City, which costs $100 for the weekend. For more information, call (870) 817-7444.
And in order to ensure the times at King Biscuit are all good, organizers have met with the police, sheriff’s and fire departments, along with security professionals out of Little Rock, Jordan says. “Everybody’s prepared to keep everybody safe.”
Summoning the festival’s motto, she urges all blues fans to drop by.
“It’s the Biscuit, baby; there’s nothing like the real thing.”