San Diego’s Gator by the Bay festival, which bills itself as “Mardis Gras in May,” will celebrate its 21st edition next year by significantly beefing up its roster of blues performers and by celebrating the 100th birthday of Louisiana zydeco music pioneer Clifton Chenier.
The 2024 edition will take place May 9-12 at Spanish Landing Park, the event’s bayside home since 2003. By coincidence, that is the same weekend that the three-day Wonderfront Festival will be held at Embarcadero Marina Park North and Seaport Village, although the two events have very different musical focuses and are geared largely to different demographics.
This will be the first edition of Gator to benefit from the event’s new partnership with veteran festival producer Rich Sherman, who heads Orange County’s Omega Events. He will work closely with Gator’s three co-founders on the 2024 festival, after which they will step back and let him lead the event into a new era.
“Rich will basically assume the management of the whole festival,” said Peter Oliver, who co-founded Gator in 2001 with Catherine Miller and Maryann Blinkenhorn.
“We’ll be integrally involved for 2024 and then we’re basically head towards retirement. I think it’s time to let somebody else have a go at it, and Rich’s track record impressed us a lot. He’s very enthusiastic about Gator and what will happen with it in the future, and he’s bringing in bigger talent than we have.”
Sherman’s many credits include the Doheny Blues Festival — which he founded and headed for 22 years — the Subaru Newport Beach Jazz Festival, Doheny Days, the Mammoth Festival of Beers & Bluesapalooza, the Old Pasadena Jazz Festival, the Russian River Blues & Jazz Festival, and the Rhythm on the Vine concert series in Temecula.
“I have a lot of respect for festivals that have the longevity of Gator, because not many do. And I love seeing the joy the audience has for it,” said Sherman, an SDSU alum, speaking from his Foothill Ranch office in Orange County.
“Gator is an important event for a lot of people who attend it, for musicians who perform there and for the vendors. It’s really an authentic Louisiana culture event, which is not necessarily my strength, although we’ve worked with a lot of New Orleans (styled) events.”
At least five blues artists will make their Gator debuts in 2024. They include: Tennessee’s Southern Avenue; North Carolina vocal dynamo Nikki Hill (whose touring band includes award-winning San Diego guitarist Laura Chavez); Chicago’s Nick Moss Band, featuring harmonica ace Dennis Gruenling; Nevada’s Jimmy Carpenter Brass Band; Costa Mesa’s Robert Jon & The Wreck; and a headlining blues veteran who will be announced next month.
They will be part of a lineup that features C.J. Chenier — the son of the late Clifton Chenier — with his Red Hot Louisiana Band; Texas boogie-woogie pianist and singer Marcia Ball; Louisiana slide guitar wizard Sonny Landreth; and Louisiana accordionist and singer Geno Delafose and his band, French Rockin’ Boogie.
More performers will be announced for the festival, which typically features at least 80 bands and solo artists on multiple stages and features several open-air dance floors. Discounted early bird tickets will go on sale Jan. 3 through the event’s website at gatorbythebay.com.
“Rich’s history and his vast knowledge of blues in particular and the festival industry is far greater than ours,” Oliver said.
“We’ve been isolated in San Diego and he’s been all over the map with the festivals he does, which are very diverse. I went to the Doheny Blues Festival and really enjoyed it. So, we thought partnering up with Rich and then having him go forward would be a good way to to keep Gator alive.”
Gator’s expanded blues emphasis next year will take advantage of Sherman’s expertise in the genre. The 2024 festival also hopes to at least partly fill the void left by the demise of the AimLoan.com San Diego Blues Festival, which was held from 2011 until last year at downtown’s Embarcadero Marina Park North.
The festival, which was expertly curated by Michael Kinsman, raised $1.5 million and 21 tons of food items for the Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank during its 12-year run. Kinsman stepped down after the 2022 edition, citing a COVID-19 pandemic-fueled surge in production costs and lower audience attendance last year.
In May, food bank executives quietly announced their decision to discontinue the blues festival. While Kinsman is disappointed by its demise, he expressed enthusiasm about Sherman coming on board with Gator.
“It’s a great thing because Rich is one of the best festival operators anywhere,” Kinsman said via email from his home in Memphis.
“I first heard of him in 1998 and met him a couple of years later. He and I have become friends through the years. We used to share information and solicit advice from each other because we were doing similar events. He ran a great blues festival at Doheny. He is as good as anyone I know at building a festival from the ground up, meaning he can take a raw plot of land and build a good event.”
Gator’s 2019 edition drew more than 14,000 people over its four-day run. More than 80 music artists performed on multiple stages at Spanish Landing Park, adjacent to Harbor Island and San Diego International Airport. The festival was dark in 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, then resumed last year.
“We’ve got a long way to go with Gator, but my intention is not to overhaul anything because it’s a wonderful event,” Sherman said.
“Maybe over time we’ll see incremental changes after looking at the festival with fresh eyes. The silliest thing we could do is to come in and say: ‘We could do it better.’ Our intention is to run it the way it has been, with improvements, produce the 2024 Gator with Peter, Catherine and Maryann, and then see what it looks like after next year.”