Lexington food festival has a lot of great music on the menu, too
Crave Lexington
Noon Aug. 24, 25 at Bluegrass Fairgrounds at Masterson Station Park, 3051 Leestown Rd. $8, $12. Children 10 and under admitted free. cravelexington.com.
Since it always been billed as a “food and music festival,” we all know where the priorities stand for Crave Lexington, as well as what its audience makes its way to Masterson Station Park every August for. Why, food, of course, courtesy of nearly 50 vendors and assorted culinary displays listed as “food performances.” Hey, Crave is now it’s seventh year, so the game plan is probably pretty well established.
That’s not to say the festival has ever skimped on the music, whether it was through prime national grooves in years past from the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound or an extended roster of expert local artists that has included Justin Wells, Johnny Conqueroo, The Northside Shieks and Chico Fellini. There was even a time last year where the music almost seemed to take its cue from the food by way of an early afternoon set from the youthful Lexington power trio Sour Cream. Truly, this was a band born to play Crave.
This year’s lineup serves up one of Crave’s most far-reaching musical menus. The bluegrass-and-then-some sound of The Wooks headline on Saturday, a mere two weeks after being showcased at the Railbird festival and earning, as a result, favorable notice from Rolling Stone magazine.
Leading up to Wook time will be a set from Ernie Johnson from Detroit. Take a wild guess as to where his base of operations is. Now take another one because Ernie isn’t a “he,” but a nine-member ensemble with funk grooves rooted in Afrobeat. The troupe isn’t from Detroit, either, but Cincinnati.
Also keep an eye and ear out Saturday for a Crave perennial, the March Madness Marching Band, which usually performs within the crowd, and WindSync, a frequent flyer not of Crave Lexington, but of the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington (which is presenting the Houston-based ensemble in several other local performance settings this week).
Sunday keeps to the familiar with the return of the seemingly omnipresent Joslyn and the Sweet Compression topping the bill. Also fresh from a well-received Railbird set, the Lexington soul/funk collective previously served as a Crave headliner in 2017.
A somewhat rare outing by local country/Americana fave Coralee and the Townies (rare, primarily, because Coralee now lives and works in Nashville) fortifies the bill along with the string music slant of the Blind Corn Liquor Pickers, the genre-bashing indie folk-pop of Bear Medicine and the self-described “power-popular psych-song glam-folk rock” of Letters of Acceptance.
Here’s the full rundown of the beats for your eats at this year’s Crave Lexington.
Aug. 24: People Planet (12:30 p.m.), Roadie (2 p.m.), Holy Mountain Top Removers (3:30 p.m.), March Madness Marching Band (4:30 p.m.), Wayne Graham (5 p.m.), Lee Carroll’s Ethos Jazz Quintet (6:30 p.m.), WindSync (7:30 p.m.), Ernie Johnson from Detroit (8 p.m.), The Wooks (9:30 p.m.).
Aug. 25: Letters of Acceptance (12:15 p.m.), Bear Medicine (1:30 p.m.), Blind Corn Liquor Pickers (2:45 p.m.), Coralee and the Townies (4:15 p.m.), Joslyn and the Sweet Compression (5:45 p.m.).
B.B. King Blues Band
6:45 p.m. Aug. 26 for the “WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour” at the Lyric Theatre and Cultural Arts Center, 300 E. Third. $20. lexingtonlyric.tix.com, woodsongs.com.
Few artists were more synonymous with a specific genre of music as B.B. King was with the blues. For over seven decades, the guitarist, vocalist and bandleader served as the blues’ most commercially recognized champion. Even those whose familiarity with the music was minimal would have likely known his name.
King died in May 2015, four months shy of his 90th birthday and a mere year after his final Lexington concert. Today, his sound, built around a revue-style blend of blues, soul and R&B, is carried on the band that bears his name. Made up predominantly of veterans who backed King during the final years of his career but augmented by guitarist/vocalist Michael Lee (a contestant from season 15 of “The Voice”), the B.B. King Blues Band has started to establish its own visibility.
In May, the ensemble released “The Soul of the King,” an album that enlisted help from such multi-generational blues stylists as Taj Mahal, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Joe Louis Walker and Kenny Neal. But Lee gets the last word by closing the album with an update of King’s signature hit, “The Thrill is Gone.” Lee performed the tune last year on “The Voice” as an audition piece.
The band’s Lexington appearance for the Monday taping of the “WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour” will also enlist Claudette King, the Atlanta-based singer who is the youngest daughter of the blues giant.
This story was originally published August 21, 2019 at 9:45 AM.