While its shiftless younger cousins, rock and hip-hop, rely on the impulsive tendencies of youth, blues is a genre that rewards mastery. From B.B. to John Lee, the best bluesmen only improve with age. Case in point: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inductee Elvin Bishop. His 1976 single “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” recently found younger audiences on the first Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack, and he proves he’s still got it on his 2014 LP Can’t Even Do Wrong Right, with its knee-slapping title track. Bishop headlines the Fountain Blues Festival.

Elvin Bishop
Sat, 6:30pm, $20
Plaza de Cesar Chavez, San Jose

The 36th annual Fountain Blues Festival is just a week away. But for blues fanatics, there’s plenty more free-form jamming, harmonica solos and hard living to celebrate during “Blues Week,” which runs from this Sunday until the main event at Plaza de Cesar Chavez on June 24.

Bassist and producer Frank “Tebo” Thibeaux will be kicking everything off with a free show—Sun., June 18 at 2pm—at the San Pedro Square Market. He’ll be backed up by his band Tebo’s Howlin Wolf Revue, playing a combination of funky blues with a little zydeco thrown in for good measure.

Next up, vocalist and harpist John Németh will be celebrating the release of his new album Feelin’ Freaky with a release party at Poor House Bistro on Monday, June 19 at 7pm.

Those looking to get a taste of what’s to come at the festival proper can catch a sneak peek of Fountain Blues headliner and harmonica virtuoso Aki Kumar, who jams with his band at Poor House Bistro on Tuesday, June 20 at 5pm.

Blues lovers with a desire to learn how to play can get a crash course at Arena Green West, across Autumn Street from the SAP Center, at 8pm. June 21 is international Make Music Day and to celebrate, local musician and Fountain Blues Foundation board member Ned Craft will host a harmonica workshop. Kids are welcome.

Also on Wednesday, in Redwood City, British Blues Hall of Fame-inductee Matt Schofield and his band will be lighting up Club Fox with a good old-fashioned blues jam featuring Oakland blues and soul singer Terrie Odabi.

Chef Ramon will be hosting his annual Big Blues Week Jam at Poor House Bistro on Thursday starting at 6pm. It’s unclear which special guests Ramon has enlisted to play this year, but it’s safe to assume it’ll be a good time.

Jerry Miller, lead guitarist and founding member of Moby Grape, provides direct support to the festival with a Friday night pre-party at Poor House Bistro.

Finally, the festival will be capped by a midnight after-party performance from blues guitarist Daniel Castro at Poor House Bistro.

Blues Week
Jun 18-Jun 24
San Jose

Of all the incredible blues performances Dan Ross has seen in his time, there is one he will never forget. “It was just fantastic when John Lee Hooker came out and basically rocked 3,000 people with his boot,” Ross says, recalling one of the two times the blues legend performed at the Fountain Blues Festival in San Jose.

It was the mid-’80s, and Ross was a 19-year-old San Jose State University student intent on helping build a blues festival for his alma mater. He couldn’t possibly have known back then that the Fountain Blues Festival would go on to become one of San Jose’s best known music festivals.

Not even Ted Gehrke, who was serving as faculty advisor to Ross and the rest of SJSU’s Associated Students—the student-run organization that pushed to start the festival—realized what they had set in motion. “Never in [his] wildest dreams” did Gehrke think the Fountain Blues Festival would grow like it has.

The Associated Students started the Fountain Blues Festival in 1981. According to Gehrke, the students chose to focus on blues because of its mass appeal and because of budget constraints: hiring blues musicians was cheaper than pop or rock artists.

For the first 25 years, even though the festival was free, Gehrke, Ross and others still managed to book top talent—like Hooker, Buddy Guy and Bo Diddley.

The festival did suffer some slow years. Heavy rain forced organizers to reschedule the festival in 1994 and the whole show was nearly halted in 1997 because of financial troubles. However, just like the music it presents, the festival proved tough to kill.

Organizers started charging festival goers in 2005. That same year, they booked Etta James, who undoubtedly helped ticket sales. That year’s Fountain Blues Festival sold out fast.

Today, the fest is produced by the non-profit Fountain Blues Foundation. The foundation is composed of 14 volunteer board members, with Gehrke as president and some of the same 1981 individuals who were a part of the Associated Students team that organized the first Fountain Blues Festival, including Ross. Coming into its 35th year, organizers expect to draw between 3,000 and 5,000 people from all over the South Bay and beyond.

Looking into the future, Fountain Blues Foundation member Amy Anderson says the goal of the festival remains the same as always—but with a twist.

The mission of the Fountain Blues Festival has always been to preserve the history of blues. However, Anderson says, the foundation is currently looking at ways of drawing new listeners into the fold, which means including a variety of artists and bands with different backgrounds—not just the blues.

“We’re trying to diversify the music to broaden the audience,” Anderson says, noting that younger listeners might not even realize how much the popular music they have grown up listening to is influenced by the blues.

As Ross puts it: “It’s a blues festival, but it’s really an American music festival.”

This year’s headliners are The California Honeydrops. Known for their energetic and engaging performances, The California Honeydrops play a mixture of R&B, funk, Delta blues and Southern soul. Their impressive repertoire of performances includes festivals like Outside Lands, Monterey Jazz and High Sierra. 

Returning to the festival this year is Otis Taylor. Known for songs “Nasty Letter” and his version of “Hey Joe,” Taylor has played the Fountain Blues Festival twice before—in 2004 and 2010—and Anderson describes him as “Jimi Hendrix on the banjo.” Taylor’s somber lyrics and stories capture the purest and most authentic form of the blues.

Opening the event is the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir. The award-winning choir was founded in 1986 at a gospel music workshop at Living Jazz’s Jazz Camp West. 

The festival still keeps close ties to SJSU by including a side stage where students from SJSU and area high schools showcase performances.

Fountain Blues Festival
Jun 25, 11am, $20-$75
Plaza de Cesar Chavez, San Jose

When the Fountain Blues Festival started in 1981, there was barely a place for blues musicians to play in San Jose. Yet it drew 1,000 people that first year. The next year, the organizers managed to score John Lee Hooker to headline. They more than doubled the attendance. Through the years, tons of blues legends have graced the Fountain Blues Festival stage, including Bo Diddley, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Canned Heat, Robert Cray and Elvin Bishop. Now in its 33rd year, the Fountain Blues Festival is still going strong with top names in blues.

Rock and blues outfit Len Cat will kick the festival off with a song at noon. Following them will be the Dan Goghs, who play Latin-funk-country-folk-tinged blues. The Dan Goghs will stick around to back Kim Addonizio, San Jose State University poet-in-residence, who will read some of her works—and who also plays a mean blues harmonica. She will introduce the first of the festival’s four headliners: Girls Got the Blues.

Girls Got the Blues
(12:15-1:40pm)
Lara Price came to the Bay Area in 1997. By the following year, she was running a regular blues jam over at JJ’s Blues. She’s opened up for several blues greats and has gigged all over. Her strong sultry voice has been a hit with blues fans. Her latest project, Girls Got the Blues, is an all-female blues group. They pay proper tribute to the blues, including playing a lot of the classics. Her backing band are all seasoned blues musicians in the Bay Area, though it might not be accurate to call them her “backing band,” since several of them take turns singing lead vocals. Price is just more of the ringleader to this talented ensemble.

Roy Rogers & the Delta Rhythm Kings
(2-3:30pm)
Longtime Fountain Blues Festival devotees may remember Roy Rogers when he kicked off the first Fountain Blues Festival in 1981. He’s gained a reputation as a slide guitar aficionado, pulling from both the country and blues traditions. He’s brought his slide skills to several live performances and/or recordings of John Lee Hooker, Linda Ronstadt, Sammy Hagar, Bonnie Raitt, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Elvin Bishop, Carlos Santana and Steve Miller. He’s also a talented band leader in his own right. The Delta Rhythm Kings strike a very fine balance between classic delta blues and southern rockabilly.

Ruthie Foster
(4-5:30pm)
In 2009, Ruthie Foster’s album, The Truth according to Ruthie Foster, was nominated for a Grammy for best contemporary blues album. But her style goes beyond traditional blues. She takes pieces of R&B, jazz, country, soul and of course the blues, melding it all into one sound. But she’s really known for her powerful voice. It gets compared to singers from all different styles: Bonnie Raitt, Aretha Franklin and Ella Fitzgerald. She brings a little bit of each of them to her performances. She’s been moving crowds since 1997, but has really been getting a lot of attention the past five years or so.

John Mayall
(6-7:45pm)
Arguably one of the biggest names in the British Blues movement is John Mayall. The sound predated (and influenced) the blues-rock explosion that the Rolling Stones and other rock & roll bands came out of in the ’60s. In fact, Mayall’s band, the Bluesbreakers, served almost as a training ground for future blues-rock stars. The list of people that played in the Bluesbreakers before they were famous is stunning: Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce (Cream), Peter Green, Jon McVie and Mick Fleetwood (Fleetwood Mac), Mick Taylor (Rolling Stones ’69-’74) and Don “Sugarcane” Harris (Mothers of Invention). The list goes on. The reason Mayall never gained the celebrity status several of his bandmates did was that he always stuck closely to blues, never jumping in on the more accessible blues-rock sound.

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