Page 47 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2019

The Mammoth Husky Club Ukulele Kids opened the 23rd Annual Mammoth Festival of Beers & Bluesaplooza. Photo courtesy of the Infinite Music Foundation
guest artists into public schools and gives students free tickets support the Infinite Music Foundation, whose goal is to get
to concerts in the community. This year, the festival is proud children thinking musically at a young age so they’ll carry that
to feature a performance by a 14-year-old piano player who appreciation throughout their lifetimes.
attended one of its piano workshops last year. The Playing with Fire Free Summer Music Festivals series
Several festivals include young artists on the schedule. in Omaha, NE, supports the local blues society’s BluesEd
At the 2018 Mammoth Festival of Beers & Bluesapalooza Youth Artist Development Program. Jeff Davis, organizer and
in Mammoth Lakes, CA, the Ukulele Kids, all third and producer, neatly summed up how important it is to provide
fourth graders, opened the festival. The resulting video on performance opportunities for students. “Every Playing with
YouTube proves that nothing opens a blues festival quite Fire show has been opened by a BluesEd youth band. If
like 12 adorable kids and their teacher, all strumming their you want to have young people play the blues, you need to
four-stringed instruments and singing. The festival’s proceeds present opportunities for them to do so.”
The Playing with Fire series supports a wide variety of
organizations in addition to youth musical education. Donate
Life Nebraska was chosen as a partner specifically as a result
of the festival’s friendship with Walter Trout, whose life was
saved four years ago by the liver transplant he received at
the Nebraska Medical Center. Curtis Salgado also had a life-
saving liver transplant there in 2006. Thanks to the presence
of Donate Life Nebraska’s information booth at the festival,
countless people have been educated about the intense need,
inspiring hundreds of new donors to sign up.
Blues festivals benefit a wide array of worthy causes. They
include the Clarksdale (Mississippi) Downtown Development
Association, which receives proceeds from the Juke Joint
Festival, and the Killer Blues Headstone Project, a beneficiary
of the White Lake Blues Festival in Michigan. Steve Salter,
founder of the Headstone Project, says that, thanks to the
money raised by the festival, 104 headstones have been
Donate Life Nebraska Coordinator Lisa Carmichael (lt) with Marie and Walter Trout placed at previously unmarked graves of blues artists. “These
(ctr, rt) after a Playing with Fire concert. Photo courtesy of Playing with Fire people are the architects and creators of the blues, soul and

Blues Festival Guide 2019 45