Plans are taking shape for the 2009 BBQ & Blues Festival and the performance schedule has been firmed up. Headlining this year’s event will be Smokin’ Joe Kubek and Bnois King. The pair are very well known in national blues circles. The festival, one of the fastest growing in the South, will be held April 24-25 and features a fully sanctioned barbecue cookoff and music all weekend long. Friday night’s free show will feature three local acts Southwind, The Mark Henson Band and 4U2C. While the BBQ teams are slaving over the grills that evening, the public is invited to participate in a sauce contest with the winner taking home a guitar autographed by Willie Nelson. The guitar’s value is estimated at $7000. The sauce contest is being sponsored by Old Whiskey River Kentucky Bourbon, for which Nelson is the pitchman. Sauce contest participants will enter one cup of their sauce which must include the sponsor bourbon in its recipe. There will be a small entry fee for the contest. Firefly vodka and Claussen pickles have also signed on as event sponsors and will be conducting special events and publicizing the festival. Saturday is turn in day for the barbecue teams and another free concert is on tap featuring the Phil Layove Soul Band, Bluegil Blues Band and local favorite Junkshun. The Poker Run will also return and begin at the courthouse at 1 p.m. Saturday. Saturday night’s event kicks off at Ritz Park at 6:30 p.m. Admission is $10. Kicking off the show will be Master Blasters followed by The Buckeye Band. The headline act will begin at approximately 9:20 p.m. after the presentation of the Georgia Music Legend Award and the Dewaine Bell scholarship. A Southern rock legend has been nominated for the award and negotiations are underway to get him here. ’We think this year’s festival will be the best ever. We hope everyone is as excited as we are,’ noted event chairman T.J. Imberger. For more information on BBQ & Blues ’09, to become a sponsor or to volunteer, call the Chamber of Commerce at 770-358-5884. Filmed at the North Atlantic Blues Fest in 2007, this clip is a great sample of what we can expect from Smokin’ Joe. http://www.youtube.com/v/uRX6lXxfYG8&hl=en&fs=1
Be First to Comment