Ten other acts are on the bill. They play Town Hall, Tall Guy Brewing, Bainbridge Park and a tent at Noyo Headlands Park.
“We turn Town Hall into a blues club,” said Fort Bragg resident Pam Bell, who produces the festival.
“For me, the reason for creating this festival is to help just raise morale and raise the vibe in our corner of the world and to help put Fort Bragg on the map as a really cool place to be and come visit,” she said in an interview Friday.
Lindell plays the tent at 5 p.m. Saturday, May 1. He was born in San Mateo in 1969 and built a following in Northern California before he left for Louisiana, according to his biography at Alligator Records, a label that has released his albums. Charlie Musselwhite and Tom Waits came to his early shows, the label says.
The label describes his music as a mix of “West Coast rock and swampy Gulf Coast R&B with honky tonk country and Memphis soul.” His most recent album, “Oakland,” came out in 2023.
Bell said picking a headliner comes down to budget and availability.
The festival’s announcement says the lineup “spans different Blues sounds, styles, genders, ages, and ethnicities.” Most of the acts come from the Bay Area.
Three days of music
The music starts downtown on Friday, April 30. PB & JAM Band, a Marin County group that plays rhythm and blues and rock classics, opens at Town Hall at 2 p.m. Kelly’s Lot plays Tall Guy Brewing at 4:30 p.m. Kelly Zirbes, whom the band’s site calls “a folk singer/songwriter with a heart for the blues,” formed the Southern California band in 1994.
The Carmen Ratti Band with singer Jill Dineen plays Town Hall at 7:30 p.m. The Bay Area band won the Golden Gate Blues Society’s International Blues Challenge in 2023 and released its second album, “Come to Me,” in May, according to its site.
“The acoustics in there are great,” Bell said of Town Hall. Her crew puts in a stage and draping. “And it looks so cool,” she said.
publicity photo dated June 20, 2025. The band is scheduled to play a free community concert at 11 a.m. Saturday, May 1, 2027, at the
Bainbridge Park pavilion in Fort Bragg, Calif., during the Fort Bragg Blues Festival. (Eric Fingal/The Lucky Losers via Bay City News)
Saturday begins with a free show. the Lucky Losers, a San Francisco band fronted by singer Cathy Lemons and harmonica player Phil Berkowitz. The band plays the Bainbridge Park pavilion at 11 a.m.
Most of the festival’s audience comes from out of town, Bell said, and some Fort Bragg residents can’t afford a ticket.
“And so we create a free community concert on Saturday morning for them,” she said.
Gates at the headlands open at noon Saturday. The festival first put up the tent there in 2026.
“It’s so dynamic,” Bell said.
Maxx Cabello Jr., a guitarist and singer from the South Bay, plays at 1 p.m. The Jenny Kerr Band, from Marin County, follows at 3 p.m. Kerr plays clawhammer banjo, dobro, guitar, piano and harmonica, according to her site, which gives Oct. 23 as the release date for her album “The Girl Who Swallowed the Moon.” Lindell follows at 5 p.m.
Ben Rice & The PDX Hustle play Town Hall at 8:30 p.m. Saturday, a show the festival’s schedule limits to all-access ticket holders. Rice started the band, which has a horn section, in 2023, and it plays across the Pacific Northwest.
Sunday, May 2, gates open at 11 a.m. Lilla, a singer born and raised in Portland, Oregon, plays at 12:30 p.m. She won the Cascade Blues Association’s solo Journey to Memphis challenge and competed at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Tennessee, according to her site. Slide guitarist Dennis Johnson and his band, the Revelators, play at 2:30 p.m.
The Anthony Paule Soul Orchestra featuring Willy Jordan closes the festival at 4:30 p.m. Guitarist Paule formed the band in San Francisco in 2007, and Jordan is its singer. The band’s site says it has 20 Blues Music Awards nominations and no wins, which it calls “a perfect record of 20 for 20.”
Bell said she picked dates that would not overlap with other events.
“This is like the first music festival that kicks off the festival season,” she said.
Getting a ticket
The Town Hall and Tall Guy shows are mostly for holders of all-access passes, which are good for the whole weekend, Bell said. The festival sells 150 of those passes, a number she said is set by the size of the rooms. They go on sale at 8 a.m. Dec. 1, the festival said on its Facebook page, and the first 50 buyers save $35.
Weekend and day passes cover the tent at the headlands. The festival’s post gives Jan. 15 as the date all tickets go on sale. No 2027 prices are posted. In 2026 an all-access pass cost $295, a two-day pass $175 and a day pass $100.
If all-access passes don’t sell out, Bell said, she’ll open the Friday shows to single tickets closer to the festival, at about $35 to $40 a show. People can also show up that day and see if there’s room, she said.
Who works it
Local nonprofits work the festival and keep what they make. Mendo Food Network sells the beer and wine, and Flockworks ran parking at the 2026 festival, Bell said. Both will be back. She said she brings nonprofits into the festival “so they can make money on their own.”
The festival is the city’s own event. The City Council approved a contract with Bell’s company in August to produce it and named the first weekend in May “Fort Bragg Blues Festival Weekend.”
The full schedule is at fortbraggblues.com.