The 2024 Bentonia Blues Festival will return this weekend at the historic Blue Front Café in Bentonia. The 52nd anniversary of this year’s festival will be held from June 13 until June 15 with food and merchandise vendors, live music, and more.
This year’s lineup includes:
• June 13: Red Meat Rhetoric, The Blues Doctors, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes and the Deal Harp Band with special guest Irene
• June 14: Dallas Ponce, The MoJo Hands, Nick Wade, 19th Street Blues Band, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes and Chris Gill and the Sole Shackers
• June 15: Adam Jennings and Oliver, Bentonia VooDoo Q, Eddie “Shawdy” Hinton, RL Superbad, Ray Cashman, Shaun Simmonds, Ryan Lee Crosby, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, YZ Easley and the Kent Burnside Blues Band
The Bentonia Blues Festival began in 1972 on a farm just up the road from the world-famous Blue Front Cafe on land owned by the Holmes family. It was a tiny event, with only one D.J. and Walter “Big Daddy” Hood (“500 lbs. of Blues”) performing a capella. The location of the festival was moved to downtown Bentonia, in 2006. The festival has attracted blues performers and fans from far and wide.
“When I started this festival in 1972, it was to help preserve the Bentonia style of blues, which is unique to this area. I knew then that it would be a great event, but I never knew it would be as big as it is now,” says Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, owner of the Blue Front Cafe and creator of the Bentonia Blues Festival. “The fact that so many people have become aware of this music and want to celebrate it every year with us here in Bentonia really warms my heart. Every year we have people here from a different country or state that’s never been before. The Bentonia blues is still alive, and it’s right here.”
