By rssfeeds-admin The Paxico Blues Festival is set to return for its 21st year later this September. 27 News sat down with the co-founder of the festival, Steve Hund, to discuss how this festival came to be.
“Twenty-one years ago, it was a situation where we had talked about a different kind of festival than what we had done in the past, of which we did many different ones,” Hund said. “So anyway, we thought we’d like to have a music festival. ”
When he sat down at the local café to come up with a plan, that’s when Hund says the woman he’d been waiting for walked through the door. Marvine McKeithen previously owned a club in Kansas City and had experience producing a blues music festival. Hund took it as a sign and asked her to join forces.
The festival got started with only 20 or 30 attendees. However, it now draws thousands every year.
Attendees come to Paxico to see the new and upcoming talent in the blues industry. Hund believes the festival’s success comes from the hometown feeling it brings.
“This is kind of a different sort of a festival in a way,” Hund said. “It is more, and people have told me this when I ask, ‘Why are you here?’ Is this like going to our family reunion or something. The people here are so easy to talk to. They’re just enjoying the day. This town has always attracted a crowd when any type of event was here. Well, if it’s in Paxico, oh, I’m going there. And we’ve always kind of been not fully understanding why that is. But there’s something about this town that attracts people.”
The Blues Festival takes place on the main street of Paxico from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on September 20. Attendance is free. You can learn more about the event by clicking here.
For more local news, click here. Keep up with the latest breaking news in northeast Kansas by downloading our mobile app and by signing up for our news email alerts. Sign up for our Storm Track Weather app by clicking here.
Discover more from RSS Feeds Cloud
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.