The music festival will also move to a larger venue for its return.
While the organizers of Bradenton Blues Festival, one of Sarasota-Manatee’s biggest annual music festivals, recently announced they are discontinuing the event, another area blues fest will come back after five years off.
Venice Blues Festival will return March 22-23, at a new venue, Venice Airport Festival Grounds. It will be the first time the festival has taken place since 2018’s event at Maxine Barritt Park.
Nick Sperry, who said he played Venice Blues Festival in 2016 and had been involved with the event since, will organize this year’s event along with festival co-founder and fellow musician Steve Arvey.
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“We decided this past year to bring it back — it was a staple event in Venice, and it needed to return,” Sperry said. “The reason why it’s at the Airport Festival Grounds is we needed room to grow it as a festival.”
The festival will be headlined by Average White Band, best known for their 1974 No. 1 hit “Pick Up the Pieces” that also earned them the first of their three Grammy nominations, with a lineup that still includes original members Alan Gorrie and Onnie McIntyre. The group, currently on their farewell tour, will perform March 23 along with other acts including South Florida blues guitarist and singer-songwriter J.P. Soars and his band the Red Hots, who earned four Blues Music Awards nominations in 2022 including Band of the Year. Leilani Kilgore, Mathias Lattin, Vince Johnson and the Plantation Allstars and Robert “Lefty Preacher” Sampson are also on the roster.
Topping the bill March 22 will be Steeln’ Peaches, who pay tribute to the music of the Allman Brothers Band — a group that has several ties to the Sarasota-Manatee area, including founding member and longtime Sarasota County resident Dickey Betts — and will play Venice Blues Festival after recently performing at Tampa’s Gasparilla Music Festival. Other performers that day will include two-time Blues Music Award-winning bassist Biscuit Miller playing with Arvey, and Sperry’s band Out of the Blue.
Along with the mainstage entertainment, there will be an acoustic stage with acts including St. David, Zack Pomerleau, Nick Williams, TJ Hitt, Geoff Ramsey, Stumpy Joe, Devin Williams and Kit Jones. The festival will also feature a beer garden, food trucks and local vendors.
Pre-sale tickets currently cost $12 for March 22 and $24 for March 23, with VIP tickets for each day costing $75. For more information, visit venicebluesfest.com.
Email entertainment reporter Jimmy Geurts at jimmy.geurts@heraldtribune.com. Support local journalism by subscribing.
