Festival Turns Up Heat

Festival Turns Up Heat
June 28, 2009
By Scott Smith
Times Record Online

Someone must have told Eric Lindell and Grace Potter & The Nocturnals about a no-show act Saturday in Fort Smith: The bands of Lindell and Potter cranked out tunes that were as hot and gritty as the evening air.

Representing what many are calling the “up-and-coming wave” of blues music, Lindell and Potter did more than fill the void left by absentee performer John Black at the Fort Smith Riverfront Blues Festival in Harry E. Kelley Park. Black inexplicably didn’t show up, an absence made all the more mysterious when Black and his agents didn’t return calls to festival organizers Saturday evening, said Fred Schaffer, Blues Festival board member.


KAIA LARSEN · TIMES RECORD Eric Lindell, center, plays the blues Saturday before sunset during the 19th annual Fort Smith Riverfront Blues Festival at Harry E. Kelley Park. Lindell, from New Orleans, brings a hot and spicey mix of Deep South blues, funk and creole-flavored soul.

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“Thank goodness we had the local band, Smilin’ Bob and his Bushwhackers, step in and play before Eric Lindell and the rest,” Schaffer said while trying to hide in the shadowed backstage area from the bright sun.

Festival staff also were glad Lindell and Potter didn’t disappoint. With a new, shorter haircut and tattooed forearms, Lindell arched his back and made silly faces at his band members in between his song’s chipper verses. No slouch on the electric guitar, Lindell also gave plenty of solo time to his two-man saxophone crew. One saxophone player even sang lead vocals as the band’s drummer — a dead ringer for actor Viggo Mortensen — thrashed the beat on a thin snare drum and a large ride cymbal just above his right knee.

When Potter and her co-ed band stepped into the glow of the colored stage lights, a middle-aged man stood up, took his T-shirt off and waved it over his head before gaining laughter from his friends. Potter, who also will play today at 8 p.m. at Neumeier’s Rib Room & Beer Garden, shook a tambourine and sang with a hint of rasp over the appealing, throbbing sound from her bassist and drummer.

“How is Jackie Greene?” one man asked his family as they started to leave the sponsor tent. “I’ve heard a lot about Grace Potter, but not Jackie Green. I’m looking forward to seeing Greene.”

Smilin’ Bob, Potter, Lindell and show-closer Greene weren’t the only ones to summon the attention of the dedicated, heat-fighting crowd of all ages. Booneville High School graduate Chelsey King, 18, found herself covered in a wave of cheers, whistles and applause when she was named the 12th recipient of the Fort Smith Riverfront Blues Festival’s biannual Music Scholarship.

“We are excited because Chelsey is the first female to win this scholarship,” said Tim Wilson, festival board member and founder of the scholarship program. “We are very proud of Chelsey. She is deserving, and truthfully, I’m a little overwhelmed right now by her being the first female recipient.”

King, a flute- and piano-player who will begin her freshman year at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville in the fall, said she was honored and surprised by being named the newest winner of the $1,000 scholarship.

“I want to study to be a professor of music, and I’m going to graduate school later,” said the daughter of Glenda and Shawn King of Booneville. “I love all kinds of music, and I’m excited to see Jackie Green tonight.”

So were many other music-lovers in the park. Three women stood and passed a tambourine during numerous songs. Several couples shook away their shyness and slow-danced near the front of the stage, and two security members camped inside the stage area’s bouncer-photographer pit and blew soapy bubbles.

A few minutes later, a woman temporarily abandoned her merchandise-table duties to step outside of the T-shirt tent and dance to shuffling blues rhythms. It was a seemingly spontaneous act that reflected the good-time mood that was on display on the stage, backstage and across the lawn chair-toting crowd.

Riverfront Blues Fest
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