TEXAS CITY — Several hundred area residents basked in sunlight and sound waves Saturday during the third annual Texas City Music Fest by the Bay.
The day’s program, headlined by self-described “Gypsy Songman” Jerry Jeff Walker, featured tastes of blues, Zydeco, country and Americana music, as well as games and food.
The annual festival pays tribute to Texas City native and 1999 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Charles Brown.
Crowds estimated at 2,500 to 3,000 gathered on the sprawling and still spongy grass of Nessler Park by the Doyle Convention Center by the time Walker took the stage.
Festival chairman Paul Edinburgh said the night crowd was bigger this year than last year, despite this being the first time there was an admission charge for the event.
Taking the stage at the festival were John Conlee, Texas Johnny Brown, Step Rideau and The Zydeco Outlaws and Texas Blues Brothers Tribute Band.
Under a few wispy clouds in an otherwise pristine sky, Texas City resident Willa Sparks camped out on a folding chair with a good view of the performances.
Sparks said she has attended the festival every year since it began. It’s the live music that keeps her coming back, she said. There is not always a whole lot to do in Texas City, Sparks said.
She was part of the day’s early crowd of about 75 people who gathered to watch Texas Johnny Brown.
The crowd was a little thinner than last year, but they were just as absorbed in the music, Sparks said.
Sparks said she expected the crowd to fill out as the evening wore on.
Many in the crowd watching Texas Johnny Brown leaned back in their chairs to soak up the alternately satiny and stiletto-point guitar licks, the wandering bass lines and the shuffle and punch of the drums. If there were those in the audience who weren’t blues lovers when they arrived, there appeared to have been many converts.
Brown, an 80-year-old bluesman whose professional musical career began in Houston in the 1940s, walked with his guitar through the crowd during the solo of one song. Using a wireless system for his guitar, the roving frontman chatted and laughed with the audience.
Laura Murray, originally from Louisiana but now a Texas City resident, said Texas Johnny Brown was good but she couldn’t wait for Step Rideau and The Zydeco Outlaws.
Their music reminds her of home, she said.
For several hundred kids, however, the festival’s appeal had less to do with nostalgia and more to do with the games and activities adjacent to the stage.
Children of a variety of ages climbed rock walls, bounced on inflatable and bungee rides, and gobbled down carnival food.
Both Sparks and Murray were looking for just the opposite experience, they said. Neither was really “the dancing type” but they enjoyed sitting back and letting the music do its work.
“It’s a great way for us to get out and relax,” Sparks said.
The annual festival benefits the Texas City Cultural Arts Foundation, a nonprofit organization that promotes cultural arts in Texas City.
Mainland Editor T.J. Aulds contributed to this report.
