From Buddy Guy to Brittany Howard, Austin Blues Festival honors legends, legacy of blues

For nearly half a century, Austin blues club Antone’s has carried the torch for one of America’s seminal art forms. Championing the blues was club founder Clifford Antone’s life’s work. He was a music lover, an entrepreneur and a scholar of American folk traditions. The club, which spawned a namesake record label and moved five times before arriving at its current location on East Fifth Street, became an outpost for the blues, zydeco and cosmic funk. Antone’s captured the imaginations of sound aficionados around the world. In the process, Clifford Antone helped put the Live Music Capital of the World on the map.

In the club’s early days, people would ask Antone, “Why did you pick the blues?”

“And Clifford said, ‘I didn't pick the blues, it picked me,’” his sister Susan Antone said a couple weeks before the club’s signature event, Austin Blues Festival at Waterloo Park. The music shook his soul. To share it became his calling.

Austin Blues Fest carries on Clifford Antone’s legacy

The festival is set to go down April 27-28 in Waterloo Park. Now in its second year, the event has expanded to two days with an ambitious lineup. Electric guitar legend Buddy Guy, who is currently on his farewell tour, helms on Saturday night, and soulful rock ‘n’ roll revisionist Brittany Howard takes top billing on Sunday. Saturday’s roster also includes Texas six-string heavy Jimmie Vaughan and a double shot of NOLA grooves from Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk and sissy bounce queen Big Freedia. On Sunday, jazz innovator Robert Glasper shares the stage with gospel kings, the Blind Boys of Alabama, and Cuban groove machine, Cimafunk.

In total, more than two dozen artists will take the stage. The sounds they play represent the blues in its traditional form as well as the many subgenres that carry the gut-bucket howling of yesteryear in their DNA.

The diverse programming reflects Clifford Antone’s own approach to the blues.

“The first blues artist to play Antone’s on July 15, 1975 was not a guitar-wielding bluesman, but an accordion-wielding one, Clifton Chenier, the Zydeco King of New Orleans,” Will Bridges, co-owner of Antone’s and co-founder of the blues fest said.

Antone believed you could “find the blues in anything, but it's got to have that soul,” he said.

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'Nobody was starting a blues club in 1975’

Raised in a Lebanese immigrant community in Port Arthur, the Antones grew up surrounded by Gulf Coast sounds — zydeco, rhythm and blues, Louisiana music. One night as a teenager, Clifford “ran off when my poor parents were sleeping” to sweat it out to James Brown at the nearby Pleasure Pier Ballroom where the godfather of soul’s 18-piece orchestra played an all-night jam, Susan Antone said.

“He loved (the music) so much. He just fell into it,” she said.

Clifford Antone came to Austin for school, but when college didn’t take, he turned his dreams to music, opening the first iteration of Antone’s in the mid-’70s.

“Nobody was starting a blues club in 1975. That was the disco era,” Bridges said. Blues was considered fusty, old granddaddy music, but a new generation of young Austin artists and fans became enamored with the sound.

Eventually, Antone’s would host legends like B.B. King, Muddy Waters and James Brown, but the club also became a home base for local talents and an essential way station for traveling blues men whose careers teetered on the verge of obscurity.

“Some of the people that we had there were just unreal. You just couldn't believe it, even if you never heard of them,” Susan Antone said.

The musicians were always at the heart of her brother’s mission. “They needed a place to play,” she said.

Blues Fest aims to bring Antone’s sound to a larger audience

In 1999, in search of a stage large enough to host top talents of the genre, Clifford Antone launched the Antone’s Blues Festival in Waterloo Park. Over three years, the event brought artists like John Lee Hooker, Ray Charles and this year’s headliner, Buddy Guy, to the downtown park, which was then a dusty stretch of threadbare grass and not the beautifully revitalized urban oasis that reopened in 2021.

The current Antone’s team launched Austin Blues Fest for a similar reason. Antone’s hosts blues greats year round, but with a 400-person capacity, high-interest club shows often sell out immediately. The Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park has a capacity of 5,000.

“They're really special, like beautiful shows. A lot of times, it's like a family reunion,” Bridges said.

Bridges and booker Zach Ernst, who programs music at the club and the festival, hope the event will bring the Antone’s experience to a larger audience.

“There is nothing in the world happening like this right now,” Bridges said. He believes the cultural significance of Antone’s, as a place that celebrates both the history and the modern lineage of the blues, is unique. Scaling the vibe of the club up to a festival stage has been a challenge, but “we feel like we are fighting for something,” he said.

He takes inspiration from his predecessor, Clifford Antone. “He was fighting at the time for these unsung heroes of American culture,” Bridges said.

If you go:

Austin Blues Festival takes place April 27-28 at Waterloo Park. Performances start at 1 p.m. daily. Two-day passes start at $140. Single-day tickets start at $85. In addition to music, the festival will feature a selection of food trucks and a pop-up from Big Henry's Vinyl and Gifts. 50% of proceeds from Austin Blues Festival benefit the Waterloo Greenway Conservancy. Full lineup, schedule, tickets and more available at austinbluesfestival.com.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin Blues Fest brings Buddy Guy, Brittany Howard to Waterloo Park