Monday, August 27, 2018

Edmonton Blues Festival: 20 Years

The 20th annual Edmonton Blues Festival took place August 24-26 at the Hawrelak Park Amphitheatre. It featured a stellar line up of diverse artists from multiple generations and blues traditions. Many of the acts were some of the festival's most requested from past years.

Here is a look at some of Saturday's line up. Cécile Doo-Kingué brought some high energy, excellent guitar work, and spanned different musical genres.

Edmonton Blues Festival 2018

The Paul DesLauriers Band was solid, with a solid and danceable sound.

Edmonton Blues Festival 2018

"Pianorama" featured Anthony Geraci, David Vest, and Graham Guest on the keys, with Brent Parkin's Red Hots taking care of the rest of the orchestration.

Edmonton Blues Festival 2018

Edmonton Blues Festival 2018

Edmonton Blues Festival 2018

Juno Award winners MonkeyJunk was definitely a fan favourite. Fast, loud, and powerful, the trio holds the record for the number of albums sold at the festival. Later on in their performance, they were joined on stage by Big Dave McLean and Anthony Geraci.

Edmonton Blues Festival 2018

Edmonton Blues Festival 2018

Samantha Fish, winner of the Contemporary Blues - Female Artist award at the Blues Music Awards in Memphis last May, rounded out the evening with her strong songwriting and guitar skills.

Edmonton Blues Festival 2018

Congratulations to the organizers on another successful year. Here's to the next 20 years!

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