New Crew to Bring You the Blues
Heritage Music BluesFest to Open New Chapter in 25th Year
Photo by Eric Ayres Trending
WHEELING - A new chapter is set to open next weekend when the Heritage Music BluesFest marks not only its 25th year in the Friendly City but also presents its first festival under new ownership by Waterfront Hall.
The live music extravaganza returns to Heritage Port in Wheeling this Friday through Sunday, Aug. 7-9, bringing the biggest and most diverse lineup of artists in the festival’s history.
Headlining the main stage this year will be St. Paul & The Broken Bones on Friday, JJ Grey & Mofro on Saturday and Eddie 9V on Sunday. The bill is "stacked with Grammy pedigree," organizers noted, with guitar great Eric Gales returning to Wheeling, along with fellow Grammy winners Judith Hill - songstress whose resume includes vocal pairings with both Michael Jackson and Prince, among others - and slide guitar legend Sonny Landreth, along with many, many more stellar artists.
Founded in 2001 by Bruce Wheeler, Heritage Music BluesFest is the only West Virginia festival to earn the Blues Foundation’s prestigious Keeping the Blues Alive award and has been named one of the best blues festivals in America.
Last year, Wheeler announced that he would be stepping down from the helm of BluesFest, passing the torch to the team at Waterfront Hall, which in recent years has helped invigorate the live music scene in downtown Wheeling with its venue right across the street from Heritage Port.
Dan Milleson, owner of Waterfront Hall and director of Heritage Music BluesFest presented by Modelo, said work on this year’s festival actually began before artists took the stage at last year’s event.
"It’s been intense," Milleson said. "We actually started booking bands before the last festival."
JJ Grey
Milleson teamed with Kyle Knox of Outland Presents, co-director for the festival, to curate a blockbuster lineup for BluesFest’s milestone anniversary and Waterfront Hall’s maiden voyage at the helm of the popular annual event for 2026.
"In June of last year, I met with Kyle, and we started working on this," Milleson said, noting that his team from Waterfront Hall shadowed Wheeler, his family and their crew during last year’s festival to get firsthand exposure to the behind-the-scenes operation that makes a big event like BluesFest run smoothly. "The experience has been interesting. We audited last year’s festival, but we came into this one getting our eyes opened on what it was like to actually compete for artists, having launch day and so many other things."
The challenge for the new team not only comes with pulling off a well-orchestrated operation but also with putting together a smorgasbord of music that will not only tantalize BluesFest regulars but also attract newcomers and appeal to a wider demographic of music lovers.
"We expanded the festival lineup this year to 31 bands, which was an attempt to create two experiences at one festival - one that has many genres in it, and one that has really tried to hit blues right on the nose as much as possible," Milleson said. "So we’re walking this tightrope between welcoming a new audience and catering to the veterans. We’re looking to attract a youthful new audience that likes all kinds of music … and then at the same time do blues well enough that we pass the sniff test to all of those loyal blues fans."
The lineup also includes Anders Osborne, Taj Farrant, Christina Vane, Ally Venable, Buffalo Nichols, Gracie Curran & the High Falutin’ Band, Adrian Niles Trio, Marc Ridge & The Revelers, Miss Freddye’s Roots of the Soul, John Welton & The Awakening, Company Caravan, Stone Campus, The Dead Revival Band, Ezra Hamilton, Clover Lynn, the Tino Kayafas Jazz Trio, Alex Heflin & The Moot Point, Ananga Martin, Dalchord, Red Meat Conspiracy, Seneca, Out of the Way Rob and DJ Stealth.
Organizers noted that they are hopeful the expanded menu of musical acts will impress seasoned BluesFest fans while drawing many newcomers in the process.
St. Paul & The Broken Bones
"I think it comes down to how we’ve constructed the lineup, and finding that balance of right contemporary blues artists and the sub-genres of blues - like soul and rock/blues - as well as the local and regional artists on the second stage that have dedicated fan bases, as well," Knox said. "It’s blending a lot of different fan bases and allowing fans to experience new music in the process."
The team from Waterfront Hall has been working to put together a spectacular weekend of fun for everyone. The festival will include additional staging, lighting, art installations and an enhanced attention to details throughout the outdoor venue to create a unique atmosphere.
Around 15 vendors will be on hand selling food and merchandise, along with local artists and more. There will also be an array of festival merchandise, from posters to shirts, hats, totes and other memorabilia from this year’s event.
"We’re just really focused on the guest experience," Milleson said, noting that in his mind, the high water mark for success will be that the vast majority of festivalgoers next weekend "walk out of there thinking ‘I need to come back next year.’"
A NEW EXPERIENCE
This year’s BluesFest promises to be a new experience for patrons, as it has been a new experience for the leadership team at Waterfront Hall.
In addition to Milleson and Knox, the new crew for the Heritage Music BluesFest presented by Modelo includes Rachel Krems, the festival’s director of customer service, and Morgan Hamilton, marketing director. They, along with the fellow team members at Waterfront Hall and their partner entities and sponsors, have been working to iron out all of the fine details for this year’s festival.
"We’ve been meeting every week - sometimes twice a week - since last August," said Krems. "I think it’s easy when you go to a festival to just see the engine running, everything’s going and it’s happening, but you forget how many tiny little pieces are there, and if they don’t properly function, the festival is not going to function."
From the website to ticket sales, T-shirt designs, sponsorships and more - the venture has truly been a trailblazing one for the new crew.
Anders Osburne
"This is different from Waterfront Hall because there’s a tremendous buildup and amount of hours logged for five important days throughout the year - the day the tickets go on sale, the day before the festival, and the three days of the festival," Milleson said. "So that amount of pressure on just a few days, and also the amount of hours logged, makes it a high-stakes exercise in gambling, almost. Because there could be a thunderstorm on all three days. It’s a new experience in that respect, and it gives me a lot of admiration for Bruce and his family, and for anybody who has done it for this many summers."
Two years ago, Waterfront Hall held its own festival - Waterfront Fest, with live music, a beer mile presented by the Pine Room Podcast and more. While excitement for that event had been brimming, significant rains came on the day of the festival. Milleson indicated that at least half of the anticipated crowd stayed away simply because of the rain that day.
BluesFest is a rain-or-shine event, and the festivals in previous years for the most part have been blessed with a decent track record of good weather. But the variable of Mother Nature still adds to the risk.
"You’re just betting a lot on a really short period of time," Milleson said, noting that an emergency backup plan is in place in case of a weather-related curveball. The staff at WesBanco Arena has agreed to make the facility available just in case unavoidable rain ends up in the forecast. "On Wednesday, if it looks like a total rain out, we can pull some of the stage equipment inside."
If it’s later in the week, the team cannot pivot within 24 hours, and the festival will continue outdoors rain or shine.
Advance tickets to Heritage Music BluesFest have been on sale for months, and so far, the event promises to draw music lovers from all across the nation - with some guests coming from locations as far away as Portland, Oregon.
"We have 25 states represented on our ticket buyers’ list right now, and 83 area codes," Milleson said. "So we needed to do something from a shuttle perspective with the hotels for all of these people coming from out of town."
For decades, many regular out-of-town guests and even dedicated local patrons to BluesFest stayed at the McLure House hotel in downtown Wheeling, always selling all of the rooms that weekend. However, the McLure hotel has been closed in recent years, so alternative accommodations had to be arranged.
Milleson said they collaborated with IC Cab, several partner hotels in the area and the Wheeling Convention and Visitors Bureau to provide hotel shuttles to and from the venue.
"The only way to really make it a seamless, safe and convenient experience is to provide hotel shuttles," he said.
"It is a national festival," said Hamilton. "People come from 25 different states to come to downtown Wheeling, and they all support our local businesses."
Photo by Lindsay SteeleAlly Venable
The Waterfront Hall crew said this is a key goal in what BluesFest is all about. While ticket sales are very important, the fan experience and the community impact are truly what drive the event, they said.
"We certainly don’t want to go bankrupt, but I definitely think the focus is more on the experience and having people say ‘that was awesome!’ That’s the goal," said Krems.
"It’s one of the handful of events in Wheeling that really draws in people from this broad area," Milleson said. "We want this festival to be a funnel for area businesses and area hotels. That’s one of the most important outcomes along with guest experience."
PASSING THE TORCH
While the new crew from Waterfront Hall and their partners are orchestrating this year’s BluesFest, loyalists can be reassured that familiar faces will be on hand to welcome back the regulars and greet the newcomers, as well.
As festival founder, Wheeler and his wife, Phyllis Sigal and their family are expected to play a role during the event this year as the transition unfolds.
"We will have a couple of new emcees," Milleson said. "But Bruce will be on stage for part of the event and will be interacting with the fans. All members of the family - Phyllis and their kids - will be involved to the extent that they want to be. We’re grateful for a friendly baton pass."
This year’s event has the support of several sponsors, but a key support also comes from the founder of BluesFest.
"Bruce’s endorsement is the most important endorsement we can get," Milleson said.
And they hope fans will support this year’s festival.
Eric Gales
"I think the BluesFest fans already know and love the festival," Hamilton said, noting that they intend to offer more this year for newcomers, as well. "We’re trying to do that with the second stage - trying to curate a Wheeling cultural experience other than that they can relate to. And we’re doing that on the main stage, too. I think St. Paul & the Broken Bones does that well and appeases the blues audience, but also reaches a whole new genre of folks who are coming for the first time because of them."
Organizers said they hope to take a page from the format of New Orleans Jazz Fest, which over the years evolved to include a variety of artists representing different genres, but maintaining its roots of jazz at the core of the event.
"We want Bluesfest to last another 25 years. It being the 25th anniversary this year, I think one of the ways to ensure that it lasts another 25 years is to find a new audience and try reaching out to different genres," Hamilton said.
Heritage Music BluesFest is a destination weekend at an affordable price, Milleson noted. Single-day tickets, weekend passes and VIP options are on sale at www.heritagemusicfest.com, where a myriad of additional information can be found.
"For a weekend pass, it’s $145 for 31 bands. That breaks down to $4.68 a band," Milleson said. "We really tried to expand the festival and keep the ticket price the same, and that’s resulted in a pretty good value when you look at how many bands there are against the ticket price."
Festival officials said that roughly six in 10 ticket buyers to Heritage Music BluesFest are expected to travel to the event from out of town - most from out of state. They encouraged local music lovers to come join in the fun.
"People are traveling from across the country to experience it," said Knox. "The amount of food, artist vendors and music, obviously, is really unparalleled in the Ohio Valley. So it’s a great experience for anybody."
Photo by Eric AyresHeritage Music BluesFest founder Bruce Wheeler addresses the crowd during last year’s festival.