What is the Bluesfest?
Where is the Bluesfest?
Who plays the Bluesfest?
What is a Hoedag?
Riverside Venue Policies
A celebration of the blues music genre, the Riverside Bluesfest brings world-class blues musicians to the small city of St. Marys, Ohio, for a two-day concert at the end of the summer.
Food and merchandise vendors add to the carnival atmosphere, and the venue sells adult beverages on-site.
The show takes place on Labor Day weekend. The 2010 festival is the fourth annual Riverside Bluesfest.
The Riverside Bluesfest is a non-profit fund raising project. It is hosted by the K.C. Geiger Park Committee and all proceeds benefit K.C. Geiger Park, St. Marys, Ohio's largest recreational facility. The K.C. Geiger Park Fund is a component fund of the St. Marys Community Foundation, a public charity founded in 1974 to serve the greater St. Marys community.
A group of volunteers called the St. Marys Blues Guild plans and operates the Riverside Bluesfest. Up to 300 local volunteers contribute their time to staff the festival.
Bluesfest will bring up to 3,000 music fans here to enjoy an afternoon and evening of 12-bar heaven. Bring your lawn chairs; level seating room will be plentiful between the hill and the stage. Or bring a blanket or towel and enjoy the view from the slope.
05-16-07
"Riverside" is in a corner of K.C. Geiger Park in St. Marys, Ohio. The festival derives its blues-friendly name from its location on the bank of the St. Marys River.
Two entry drives serve K.C. Geiger Park: Riverside Drive and Canalside Drive. They do not connect inside the park. On Labor Day weekend, festival-related traffic enters on Riverside Drive, audience members enter on Canalside Drive for on-site parking.
Free parking is available in two municipal parking lots on South Street, a short walk from Riverside along the Miami-Erie Canal towpath.
For the purposes of online mapping, use the address:
- K.C. Geiger Park
100 East Greenville Road
Saint Marys, Ohio 45885
(The above is not a valid mailing address. Send correspondence to "Riverside Bluesfest, PO Box 514, St. Marys, OH 45885.")
A printable 8.5" x 11" map of St. Marys directing you to the Riverside Bluesfest is available here (also linked at left as "Location Map").
St. Marys is located in west-central Ohio on US Route 33: 10 miles west of Interstate Route 75 (exit 110), 20 miles east of the Indiana state line, 60 miles north of Dayton and 100 miles south of Toledo. Fort Wayne, Indiana is 50 miles northwest of St. Marys on US 33. Columbus, Ohio is 100 miles southeast on US 33.
The Riverside Bluesfest features blues bands (no solo artists) from the St. Marys area, the state of Ohio and national and world touring groups. Internationally prominent blues artists appear at our festival, including:
- 2007 - Lonnie Brooks and Joe Bonamassa
2008 - Ana Popovic and Elvin Bishop
2009 - Lil' Ed and the Blues Imperials and The Tommy Castro Band
2010 (scheduled) - Nick Moss and the Flip Tops, The Chris Duarte Group and Kenny Wayne Shepherd
The Riverside Bluesfest stage plays host to the best of Ohio's many outstanding blues bands, including:
- 2007 - Cleveland Fats and The Scotty Bratcher Band
2008 - The Jimi Vincent Band and The Jon Justice Band
2009 - The Inner City Blues Band, Josh Boyd and the VIP Band, Johnny Reed and the Houserockers, Mark Laurens and Zydeco Fire, Ricky Gene Hall and the Goods and The Code Blue Band
2010 (scheduled) - The Sean Carney Band, The Jimi Vincent Band, The Sonny Moorman Group and Ray Fuller and the Bluesrockers
The Riverside Bluesfest invites exciting blues bands from all over, including:
- 2007 - The Doghouse Daddies (from Kansas City, MO - 1st Ohio show)
2008 - Sonny Boy Terry (from Houston, TX) and Stacy Mitchhart and the Blues U Can Use Band (from Nashville, TN)
2009 - Davina and the Vagabonds (from St. Paul, MN - 1st Ohio show) and The Doghouse Daddies (from Kansas City, MO)
2010 (scheduled) - The Sugar Thieves (from Phoenix, AZ - 1st Ohio show) and Shane Dwight (from San Jose, CA)
The Riverside Bluesfest features talented blues bands from the St. Marys area, including:
- 2008 - No Right Turn (Lima, OH), Lady Bird and the Dirty Dirty Earthworms (Celina, OH) and Big Worm and the Nightcrawlers (Delphos, OH)
2009 - MC Blues (Celina, OH), Lady Bird and the Dirty Dirty Earthworms (Celina, OH), Chip Brogan Layin' Low (Celina, OH) and The Nightcrawlers (St. Marys, OH)
2010 (scheduled) - The Hipsters (Lima, OH)
Obviously, many of the bands above could be listed in more than one section. For example: Sonny Boy Terry is originally from the St. Marys area (Van Wert, OH) and has toured internationally, qualifying him for every category. The above breakdown is intended to highlight the wide variety of bands booked for the Riverside Bluesfest.
To make sure each Riverside Bluesfest presents a fresh show for our audience, it is currently our policy not to book any band two consecutive years.
Please send comments on our talent selections, or requests for your favorite blues acts, to the Riverside Bluesfest.
The Riverside Bluesfest mascot was announced in this March 17, 2008 press release:
- ST. MARYS, OHIO -- The St. Marys Blues Guild is resurrecting a local tongue-in-cheek legend, and putting it to work.
More than 60 years ago, a loosely-knit organization known as the “Hunters, Trappers and Traders” operated on and around Lake St. Marys. Fred “Midget” Longsworth was their correspondent to the papers and “Vice President and Cook,” and he wrote a few rambling articles about their rare encounters with a mysterious lake monster.
Described by “Midget” in 1944 as “a big critter, elongated, something like an alligator and yet different; something like a dinosaur of prehistoric days, but different,” the beast breathed smoke from its nostrils and “struck terror into the old HT&T and left them totally unprepared to defend their rights when pies and sandwiches disappeared almost from under their noses.”
The late Evening Leader columnist Hal Miller kept the story alive from the '70s into the '90s, long after the “Hunters, Trappers and Traders” had themselves passed into legend. Miller often wrote of local folklore and talk around town with a wry wit – calling, for instance, the Celina Lighthouse “that Coke bottle on the lake” -- and one of Hal's favorite subjects was the HT&T's fabled creature, known as the Hoedag.
With this press release, the St. Marys Blues Guild is adopting the Hoedag (or, perhaps, one of the original Hoedag's descendants), as the official mascot of the Riverside Bluesfest, held annually on Saturday of Labor Day weekend at K.C. Geiger Park.
“It's a good match,” said Riverside Bluesfest Operations Chairman Chris Botkin. “The blues is made up of equal parts mystery and magic, loneliness and lunacy -- like a nearly forgotten monster. The Hoedag is a St. Marys legend that no group since the 'Hunters, Trappers and Traders' has claimed, and he'll make a great spokescreature for the Riverside Bluesfest.”
If it could talk, that is.
Riverside Bluesfest General Chairman Rees McKee agrees with Botkin on one point. “The Hoedag idea is lunacy, all right,” McKee said. “But it's not costing us anything, so I suppose it can't hurt.”
A preliminary sketch of the new-millennium monster has been roughed out, based on old newspaper accounts and wild-ass guesswork about what a Hoedag in his terrible twos would look like. Without further ado, the St. Marys Blues Guild is happy to introduce the official mascot of the second Riverside Bluesfest: Bo the Hoedag.
In cooperation with the St. Marys Blues Guild, Chicago, Illinois, animator and digital designer Philip Carrera created the featured Hoedag image. See more of Philip's work on his web site: www.grannygoodguns.com.
