Vintage photos: From humble beginnings, NYS Blues Festival is now a summer fixture

Chevy Court at the New York State Fairgrounds will be alive with music as the New York State Blues Festival returns with three days of music from Thursday through Saturday.

Warren Haynes will headline on Saturday night. The event will also feature 2025 Grammy nominee Ruthie Foster and 2020 Grammy nominee Jontavious Willis, plus several local musicians.

Admission is free. Parking in the fairgrounds Brown Lot is available for $10 per car and $5 per motorcycle. ADA parking is in the Emerald Lot. Lawn chairs are welcomed.

The event began in 1992 and has survived a few hiccups, location changes, and cancellations to become a fixture on the Central New York summer festival calendar.

The event dates back to May 1991 when Jim Murphy and Tom Townsley started the Central New Blues Society. In June, they watched downtown Syracuse light up for the first three-day jazz festival in city history.

Why not the blues? they thought.

“All the blues fans around here go to the Chicago festival in June,” Murphy told The Post-Standard in early 1992. “In New York, all there really is that one-day thing in Saratoga.”

Why not have blues “thing” in right here in Syracuse?

The Central New York Blues Festival was scheduled for July 31 and August 1, 1992, with performances at Armory Square, the Hotels at Syracuse Square, Tavern on the Square, The Kennedy Station, Zodiac, Café Margaux, and Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.

The musical talent was “diverse and deep,” The Post-Standard’s Mark Bialczak wrote. Regional and local acts were joined by headliners Carey Bell, Magic Slim, Jerry Portnoy and the Streamliners and others.

You had to pay $20 if you wanted to see everyone at all the venues.

Organizer Jimmy Austin did not sound overly optimistic about the Blues Festival’s prospects on the eve of its first event.

“My feelings have gone from ‘It’s a wonderful, incredible idea’ to ‘I wish I never got involved in this’ to ‘I’m glad we stuck with it.’”

Local blues fans should be glad too. The festival was a hit.

“While the musicians excelled, the fans danced and cheered and the cash registers rang,” Brian Bourke reported for The Post-Standard.

“I have no idea how much money we took in, but I’m real happy with everything tonight,” Austin said.

The event expanded in 1993 and rebranded as the “New York State Blues Festival.”

Performances moved to Clinton Square and Hotel Syracuse before setting up exclusively at Clinton Square from 2004 to 2019, except for 2011 when it took place at the Inner Harbor.

The Blues Festival has been at Chevy Court since 2021, when it was one of the first big gatherings in Central New York following the Covid pandemic.

(The festival was cancelled in 2010, 2013, and 2020.)

For a complete schedule for this year’s event, visit nysbluesfest.com.

Before heading out to the Fairgrounds, check out these photos from past Blues Festivals.