The Philadelphia Blues Society to host its first-ever annual blues festival this month

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The Philadelphia Blues Society is hosting its first-ever annual blues festival at Temple University’s Ambler Campus on Oct. 11.

The daylong event will feature performances by local, national and internationally renowned blues musicians and bands, with food trucks, craft vendors and a beer garden onsite.

Attendees can expect to hear a range of acoustic and electric blues styles, said Greg Gaughan, a Philadelphia Blues Society board member and one of the festival’s organizers.

“Our mission is to promote and preserve the blues, and by having the festival, we hope to bring blues lovers together to get an idea of the blues that’s out there currently, and just let people enjoy a day of great music,” he said. “Every style of music was basically born out of the blues, which dates back to originally African roots.”

Promoting and preserving ‘America’s original musical art form’

Jamey Reilly, owner of Jamey’s House of Music in Lansdowne, said the festival is one piece of the Philadelphia Blues Society’s mission to promote the blues in the Greater Philadelphia region.

Reilly, Gaughan and others founded the nonprofit in 2023 because Philadelphia was one of the only major metropolitan areas in the United States lacking a local blues society.

The goal is to celebrate the blues, “America’s original musical art form,” which is rooted in the artistic and cultural traditions of enslaved people in the South, Reilly said.

“It came over from Africa with the slaves in the South, and they used the music and the rhythms of their homeland to keep their spirits up, as well as to communicate with each other, working in the fields … and eventually, that music was exported,” Reilly said. “It moved north, went up to Kansas City, went to Memphis. Eventually, it worked its way up to Chicago, after the emancipation, and became electrified.”

He said the blues scene “exploded” after the electric guitar was introduced, and people around the world continue to celebrate, appreciate and participate in the blues tradition.

“It went everywhere,” he said. “Went to New York, went to Texas, got West Coast blues, Piedmont blues, all different styles, but they all come back to that one tap root. And it’s that root that still feeds the living plant of the blues.”

The Philadelphia Blues Society and this year’s festival are meant to keep that cycle going, Reilly said.

“We’re working on a blues in the schools program also, which would be really cool in the whole Greater Philadelphia region,” Reilly said. “So we can go in and we can bring artists in and do live blues for the kids, teach them the rudiments.”

The blues is ‘what’s inside of you’

Clarence Spady, an internationally-known blues guitarist and singer, said he is “honored” to be playing at the festival alongside Reilly, a bass player, and The Philly Blues Kings.

Spady, 64, started playing the blues when he was 5 years old, after his father began teaching him the guitar.

The blues meant “everything” to him growing up as a Black child in a segregated Scranton, Pennsylvania, in the late ‘60s and ‘70s.

“For all Americans of color, the blues is very vital,” he said.

Spady said too many record producers are focused on trying to find “the new blues.”

“There’s no new blues. ‘We gotta bring out a new hot dog.’ There’s no new hot dog, either it’s beef or pork, and that’s the way I look at the blues,” he said. “Because the blues isn’t an instrument or a beat or a time signature, it’s what’s inside you. It’s your feeling. It’s an emotion.”

Spady said he works to expand young people’s knowledge of blues and its traditions as a volunteer music teacher at elementary schools.

“I tell them, your instrument is your best friend, even when everyone else around you is upset with you at that time,” he said. “And I teach children [for] free. So that’s my gift that God gave me given back.”

Sponsors of this year’s festival include Conshohocken Brewing Co., March Forward, Shanahan Consulting, WSFS Bank, Herr’s Foods, Jamey’s House of Music, Greg Gaughan, Cindy Amoroso and Khadijah Renee.

Tickets are $40 and can be purchased online. Attendees are encouraged to bring blankets and lawn chairs, but no outside food or drinks are allowed.