Slideshow: Waterfront Blues Festival
125 performances, 4 days, and $726,000 raised,
“because no one should be hungry.”
Posted by: Griffin Funk on Jul 06, 2011 at 03:00PM
0 Comments
Joe Lewis of Black Joe Lewis & The Honey Bears brought a little bit of Austin, Texas to the festival on the 4th of July with sizzling songs from their new album, Scandalous.
View Slideshow »Donating a minimum of $10 and two items of non-perishable food allowed music enthusiasts and firework lovers admittance to the Waterfront Blues Festival. Festivalgoers who were positioned in-between the Miller Main Stage and the First Tech Federal Blues Stage benefited from non-stop music as soulful blues poured out of both.
View Slideshow »Booming bass lines put a groove in the collective step of the all-ages crowd.
View Slideshow »Grammy-award winning singer-songwriter, Lucinda Williams performed heartfelt songs from her extensive discography on the Miller Stage Saturday night.
View Slideshow »Maceo “The funkiest saxophone player in the world” Parker, performed some iconic James Brown and Ray Charles material with his trademark soulful saxophone on Friday. Fans could catch him again at the Marriott Hotel at 10:30 that night if they really needed another dose of his saucy sax riffs.
View Slideshow »Former Portland resident and five time Grammy Award winner, Robert Cray, excited the crowd during his first Waterfront Blues Festival.
View Slideshow »Among the five stages at the festival, The Front Porch Stage was a crowd favorite due to its checkerboard dance floor.
View Slideshow »On the 4th of July, red, white, and blue was taken to another level as beaded headpieces were found throughout the festival.
View Slideshow »In the crowd, on the bridge, or on the waterfront, the shirtless waving flagman became somewhat of a celebrity throughout the festival.
View Slideshow »A kayaker navigates through the fleet of boats, which had been there weeks in advance to get the perfect riverside view of the stages.
View Slideshow »Guitarist Julie Strange from local combo the Strange Tones—her bass-playing husband Andy Strange is also pictured—was a crowd pleaser with an energetic performance featuring go-go dancers and the band’s house party, surf-inspired rock.
View Slideshow »Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk brought the flavor of thumpin’ Big Easy funk all the way from Nawlins.
View Slideshow »The only way to properly end a Blues Festival on the 4th of July is to shoot off fireworks while “Born in the U.S.A” blasts through the sound system across the Tom McCall Waterfront Park.
Last weekend, Portland’s 24th annual Waterfront Blues Festival turned Tom McCall’s Waterfront Park into a writhing whirlpool of dancing humanity. By 10pm on Monday, the event had raked in $726,000 and 61,250 pounds of food for the Oregon Food Bank in its ongoing quest to end hunger in Oregon.
During all four days, the capacity crowd enjoyed local acts from our own prodigious talent pool as well as heavy hitters like Lucinda Williams, Maceo Parker and Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk, bobbing their heads and stomping their feet as irresistably soulful tunes reverberated through the air.
Portland Monthly caught as many of the 125 acts as we could. We braved the long lines for 12 oz plastic cups of Mirror Pond, held our breath in the designated Port o’ Potty area, and yes, we were just as enamored with that miniature light-up helicopter on Saturday night as you were. While we experienced our share of funky tunes and passionate performances, we were equally struck by the crowd’s dance moves, the likes of which we hadn’t seen since Merton Hanks.
Photographer McKenna Johnson captured some great moments, so crank up Black Joe Lewis & the Honey Bears, reapply that Aloe, and relive some of this weekend’s stand out performances with our exclusive slideshow. In 2012, the fest will celebrate its 25th anniversary by expanding to fill a whole five days.
For more about Portland arts events, visit PoMo’s Arts & Entertainment Calendar, stream content with an RSS feed, or sign up for our weekly On The Town Newsletter!
Add a Comment
We retain the right to remove comments containing personal attacks or excessive profanity, and comments unrelated to the editorial content.