The Blues Fest committee is gearing up, supplies are being packed and delivered, e-mails are flying back and forth with arrangements to tend to as we approach our 20th Annual Chenango Blues Festival. The cleanup of the Fairgrounds begins today and we do our annual walk through to finalize arrangements tonight. Setup begins tomorrow afternoon. Everyone jumps into high gear to make sure that the festival is run in such a way that festival goers are comfortable, cared for and entertained!

Up first is Samuel James who will be kicking off the festivities on Thursday, August 16th this year. Samuel has been hired to perform at a variety of workshops that we sponsor, the first of which is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. at the Guernsey Memorial Library, 3 Court St., Norwich, NY. The library has a meeting room which allows us to see our workshop artists in a very intimate setting. Bring your friends and come on down! On Friday morning he'll be performing at the NYS Veterans' Home for veterans, their families and staff before heading to the YMCA camp where he'll be entertaining young campers and giving many of them their first exposure to the blues.

If you miss Samuel's show at the library you'll have another opportunity to see him at the festival as he takes the stage on Saturday, August 18th at 2:50 p.m.

For a complete schedule of events visit our Schedule page - http://www.chenangobluesfest.org/schedule.html.

Congratulations to our Facebook Trivia Contest winners - Miles Nichols, Jim Meinhold, Marcia Adams and Dan Harendza! Enjoy your new CD's!

We want to thank Damon Drums for the outstanding drum set they are building for the 20th Annual Chenango Blues Festival! We're looking forward to hearing them! Their post from our Facebook page and picture of the drums below:

Damon Drums is making a custom, solid stave drum set for the Chenango Blues Festival for all percussion artists to use
during the festival.  Attached is a pic of the toms in various stages of manufacture.  We will post more pics as the kit progresses through the building process.  It will be a modular kit on a rack system easily changeable in almost any configuration and a wide variety of custom snare drums will be available for artists to choose from.  The tom diameters are 10", 12", 14" and 16" with a 22" bass drum.  They are made from Northern New York curly, hard-rock maple lumber with black walnut strips.   Damon Drums is proud to be affiliated with the CBF and we look forward to meeting the artists this year.  For more info on Damon Drums, please visit our Facebook site at: http://band.to/damondrums and our website at: www.damondrums.com C-ya there!

Congratulations to the 2012 Blues Music Award winners! A complete list of winners may be found on the Blues Foundations website - www.blues.org. We're excited to see that Tab Benoit, who will be playing the 20th Annual Chenango Blues Festival in his Voice of the Wetlands Allstars Band, is winner of Contemporary Blues Male Artist, Contemporary Blues Album (Medicine), and B.B. King Entertainer awards!

We're also pleased to announce that Papa Grows Funk has been added to our Friday night lineup. Other recent additions to the lineup include Davina & the Vagabonds and Bill "Sauce Boss" Wharton.

In other news, the Chenango Blues Association is introducing a new event - Chenango Summer Jam, an event that will be held on Sunday, July 29th in East Side Park, downtown Norwich, NY. To see more about this event visit www.chenangosummerjam.org.

The website is updated as soon as acts for the festival and our free Summer Concert Series are confirmed so stop by to see what will be happening in Norwich, NY this summer!