Riverhead Townscape’s effort to revive a blues festival downtown got off to a good start yesterday.
“Blues by the River,” a six-hour show at the new town square on the riverfront was headlined by Kerry Kearny and the Kings of Psychedelta, featuring five bands and a “Blues Village” offering vendors of food and snacks, local craft brews and ciders, blues fest merchandise and crafts by local artisans.
About 400 tickets were sold for the event, a tired but happy Riverhead Townscape President Jim Warner said in a phone interview this morning. He was generally pleased with how everything went, he said. It really went off without a hitch, Warner said.
“East End Arts did a nice backdrop. Phil Gatz donated the money to do that,” Warner said, referring to the longtime Riverhead Blues Festival volunteer and supporter and Riverhead resident who was one of the event sponsors.
The event drew “a nice crowd” and the town square is a great environment for a concert, Warner said.
“People remarked they were happy to be able to set up their chairs and blankets on the grass instead of blacktop,” he said.
“The only complaints were that people wanted to be able to come and go from the event. And we didn’t do that for a couple reasons. Number one, it’s real tough for us to keep track – we’re all volunteers at the gates,” he said.
Another reason was the event relies on sales of food and beverages to underwrite costs, he said. Ticket sales don’t cover all the costs of putting on an event like that, Warner said.
“We depend on the sales of our soda and the beer and the cider as well as the vendor fees that they pay us to make this thing work,” he said. “So that’s we didn’t want people coming and going. And God knows what they’re doing when they go. We didn’t want to have that in the equation,” Warner said. Those rules and the prices charged for food and beverages are typical for events of this nature, he said.
“We want this thing to work in the future,” Warner said, noting that the event was intended as a fundraiser for the all-volunteer nonprofit Riverhead Townscape. “If we don’t make a penny on it, we’re certainly not going to do it again.”
The show was opened by Kane Daily and the Roadhouse Dawgs at 12 noon, followed by Gene Casey and the Lone Sharks, Jack Licitra and the South Bay Soul and Lex Grey and the Urban Pioneers. Headliner and New York Blues Hall of Fame member Kerry Kearney and his Kings of Psychedelta took the stage at 4 p.m. to close things out.
Will Blues by the River be back next year?
Warner said he personally would like to see the organization bring it back next year. “But that’s not my decision. It’s up to the committee,” he said.
“We’re going to go through everything and make our decision. The task is to look at everything and see what we thought we did wrong, what we could do better. What we did well. Then we’ll decide from there. If I had to guess I would guess we’re going to do it again next year,” he said.
The Riverhead Blues Festival was one of the town’s biggest outdoor music festivals, drawing tens of thousands of fans to the riverfront for a weekend of blues, food and drink, and even fireworks. It was first staged by the Riverhead Business Improvement District in 1999. The Council for the Vail-Leavitt Music Hall took over production and management of the event in 2006. The festival was last produced in 2012.
Warner thanked the event sponsors and volunteers for making “Blues by the River” happen, singling out Lisa Pickersgill of Robert James Salon for her enthusiasm and hard work, and for bringing along a group of equally enthusiastic and hard-working volunteers to join Townscape’s stable of volunteers who power the group’s annual Riverhead Country Fair every Columbus Day Weekend.
While Townscape had hosted a summer concert series for many years on the grounds of East End Arts, this was the group’s first music festival, Warner said, and it’s a whole different animal. “So there was a lot of trial and error. And we got this whole thing ready in nine weeks,” he said. Overall, Warner said, he was very happy with the result.
RiverheadLOCAL photos by Peter Blasl
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