Mineral Point Blues & Roots Festival
media release: The Mineral Point Blues & Roots Festival will celebrate its sixth season with a new partner and a whole new vibe. For the 2025 season, we have forged a new relationship to present our festival at the venerable Mineral Point Opera House, the fully-restored vintage vaudeville venue in the heart of downtown Mineral Point, Wisconsin.
Just as we have during our fantastic five-year run, we will present yet another two-day lineup of great music performed by award-winning musicians from the world of blues and its musical tangents. This year’s festival will take place Friday and Saturday, August 15 & 16. And in continuing our mission to maintain a community feel, support local food vendors, and benefit tourism and the local economy, the festival will now be in the heart of Mineral Point, which will allow festival goers to enjoy the art and architecture of Mineral Point and pop into the shops, cafes, restaurants, and bars all just outside the Opera House doors.
Friday, August 15: 5:00 pm: Boo Mullarky (Library Park), 6:30 pm: Lee Kanehira Trio, 8:45 pm: Jimmy Burns Band
Saturday, August 16: 3:00 pm: Too Sick Charlie (Library Park), 4:15 pm: Elsa Harris & Company, 6:30 pm: Rip Lee Pryor Trio, 8:45 pm: Chicago Soul Revue with Willie White and Jojo Murray
Tickets for this year’s festival will go on sale at mineralpointbluesfest.org/
We are proud to say that over our five-year tenure we have earned your confidence as regular attendees and sponsors that we will offer a unique and top-notch show each year. In addition we have established a festival that attracts continuous inquiries from musicians from around the country who approach us for spots in our lineups.
We thank all of our supporters: the sponsors, volunteers, vendors, and of course our festival attendees, and we hope we will continue to have your support.
ARTIST BIOS
Lee Kanehira Trio —Lee Kanehira is a singer and blues pianist master of boogie-woogie and classic blues piano styles. She was born in Tagawa, Japan and played classical piano as a child but taught herself to play and sing after falling in love with blues. She has now played in Korea, China, Canada, Europe, and the United States to which she has returned every summer since 2008, touring now as a member of the Cash Box Kings as well as with her own trio.
Jimmy Burns Band —Jimmy Burns left Dublin, Mississippi for Chicago where as a teen he sang street corner doo-wop and recorded with The Medallionaires. He then issued several solo small-label 45s singing R&B and teen ballads in his soulful tenor that brings to mind Sam Cooke. But he stepped back from music for a couple of decades to raise six children and run his Uncle Mickey’s Barbecue business. He says he’s not a blues singer like his older brother Eddie Burns who went from Mississippi to Detroit and became a cohort of John Lee Hooker. Nonetheless after his long hiatus from music, Jimmy secured a secure niche in the blues world after recording the award-winning album, Leaving Here Walking, in 1996 for the venerable Delmark label and followed with five more, in addition to Snake Eyes for which he reunited with his bluesman brother, Eddie, in 2002. He has toured the world several times over and now returns to Mineral Point for a return engagement.
Boo Mullarky —Born in Beaumont, Texas and raised in Southwestern Louisiana, Boo Mullarky is a native born Cajun. Boo's great uncle, Minos Broussard, was one of the original guitarists for the Hackberry Ramblers and gave Boo his first lesson on the six-string at the age of five. Boo has been playing guitar ever since and specializes in rural Southern picking styles, including blues, ragtime, hokum, and Cajun. When not performing with The Cajun Strangers, one of the Midwest’s premier Cajun music dance bands, he busks as a one-human jug band medicine show playing guitar, kazoo, washboard, old car horns, bells, with a suitcase for a drum.
The Strangers’ first two CDs were on the Swallow Records label and both won the esteemed “Prix Dehors De Nous” (The Best Outside of Us) from the Cajun French Music Association in Louisiana. Their third and latest CD is Louisiana Boogie, released in 2014.
Elsa Harris and Company — Singer, pianist, songwriter, and teacher Elsa Harris may not be a household name, but it’s very likely you have heard her sing. Gospel music has been her life’s passion, and she has sung backup on the recordings of Muddy Waters, Minnie Riperton, Peter Paul and Mary, The Rotary Connection, Ramsey Lewis, Phil Upchurch, David Bromberg, The Rev. Scottie Williams, and others. But foremost, for decades she sang as a member of the famed Jessy Dixon Singers and with them performed at the Newport Jazz Festival, Radio City Music Hall, Carnegie Hall, The Royal Albert Hall, and on Saturday Night Live, where they backed Paul Simon with whom she recorded and toured the world for eight years. More recently Elsa Harris has been an activist against human trafficking, performing at events supporting the cause against modern-day slavery. Her most recent CD, on the Sirens label, is titled, I Thank God. Accompanying her will be vocalist and actress Felicia Coleman-Evans who was featured in the first ever gospel performance at Milan’s La Scala Opera House. She was soloist in the Carnegie Hall tribute to Leontyne Price and sang at President Jimmy Carter’s Inaugural Prayer Breakfast, the Congressional Black Caucus, and at the 25th anniversary of the March on Washington.
Rip Lee Pryor Trio — Richard “Rip” Lee Pryor sings and performs with harmonica and guitar, carrying forward the old school blues traditions of his father, harmonica legend Snooky Pryor, who was one of the first blues musicians to record in post-war Chicago. Rip played and toured in his father’s band—sometimes with his brothers—until going solo in 2008 after his father’s death. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree: even when performing his own compositions, Rip evokes his father’s era and style, especially the raucous street-corner sound of Chicago’s old Maxwell Street blues scene. He occasionally will include some of his father’s material in his sets. His recordings include Pitch a Boogie Woogie, Nobody But Me, and Sugar Daddy Blues.
Chicago Soul Revue featuring Willie White & Jojo Murray —The Chicago Soul Revue recalls the soul sound of 1960s and ’70s Chicago R & B. Soul blues is still alive and thriving down south as well as in Chicago’s myriad off the beaten path South and West side bars and clubs where singers like Willie White and Jojo Murray regularly perform for eager fans.
Willie White is one of Chicago's premier soul singers, as well as a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. After moving to Chicago from his native Mississippi, he first played drums in his uncle Jimmy White’s “Concepts Band.” White is also adept at playing keyboards and performed with soul stars Willie Clayton, Bobby Rush, Little Milton, and others before stepping out front to lead his own band in the mid 1990s. He has recorded a handful of singles and in 2008 released the fine album, Party Hardy. His recent recordings, Jukin’ and Pop It Off, are getting airplay on southern soul radio.
Jojo Murray has been singing and performing soul music for more than 60 years. He first sang gospel with the Golden Jubilees back in Shelby, Mississippi before moving to Chicago as a teen.
In 1971 he recorded his first single, Why Baby, and followed with other 45s, plus an album, Real Man Steppin’ Out (1989). Over the years he has also contributed his excellent guitar and voice to the recordings of others. His poignant soul ballad, From the Inside (Coday Records), from his 2016 album of the same name, still gets play on the southern soul circuit.
Too Sick Charlie — Too Sick Charlie may call Wisconsin home but his music is deeply rooted in the blues of the north Mississippi Hill country. As a one-man-band playing in the spirit of his inspiration, bluesman R.L. Burnside, he picks hip-grinding licks on a three-string cigar box guitar, rack harp, and amplified foot drum. The man lays a formidable rumble and racket of uncompromising, no-nonsense roots-music.
Begun in 2019 as a one-day fundraiser for The Mineral Point Historical Society, the Mineral Point Blues & Roots Festival has grown into a two-day festival featuring local bands and solo artists as well as award-winning and internationally touring blues acts. The festival’s mission has always been to produce a community event that promotes Mineral Point as a historic destination as well as to bring to the community a unique annual cultural treat of outstanding musicians from the world of blues music.
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