Walk and roll might sound like a low-intensity aerobics work-out, but it’s an apt description for this weekend’s 33rd annual Adams Avenue Street Fair.
To be held Saturday and Sunday, the free, all-ages music marathon will cover a six-block stretch of Adams Avenue, between 32nd and 35th streets, in Normal Heights. It will feature 110 bands and solo acts performing on six outdoor and two indoor stages, with five 21-and-up beer gardens, a carnival and all manner of food and crafts vendors along the way.
Since the entire festival area extends barely half a mile from one car-free end to the other, attendees can walk — or roll, to use more recent parlance — from stage to stage. In the process, they can sample an aural menu that features folk, blues, jazz, country, reggae, funk, salsa, Americana, R&B and several rock-hyphenates, including indie, garage and alternative. (Our picks for six likely musical highlights appears at the conclusion of this article.)
“We pride ourselves on having a diverse event that attracts the diversity that is San Diego, so we don’t have a target audience,” said Scott Kessler, the executive director of the Adams Avenue Business Association, under whose auspices the Street Fair is held. “We attract everyone from young parents pushing baby strollers to senior citizens.”
33rd annual Adams Avenue Street Fair
Who: Heartless Bastards, The Kinsey Report, The Burning of Rome, Big Jay McNeely, Charlie Chavez, Tom Brosseau, Sara Petite & The Sugar Daddies, and others
When: 10 a.m. to 10:45 p.m. Saturday; 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday
Where: Adams Avenue, between 32nd and 35th streets, Normal Heights
Admission: Free to all ages; beer garden admission 21-and-up; craft beer tasting $20 advance and $25 day of
Phone: (619) 282-7329
Online: adamsavenuebusiness.com
Last year’s edition drew about 50,000 people per day, according to Kessler. As in previous years, this weekend’s lineup is designed to appeal to a broad array of musical tastes.
Performers will range from such fresh-faced young attractions as singing band leaders Sahara Grim and Samantha Aiken, who are 17 and 19, respectively, to the blues-rocking Kinsey Report (which this year celebrates its 30th anniversary) and bar-walking saxophonist Big Jay McNeely (who first topped the national record charts in 1949 and is now a spry 87).
In between are such disparate artists as Jamaican music mainstay Pato Banton, the rootsy Austin, Texas, group Heartless Bastards and such notable San Diego bands as The Burning of Rome, The Midnight Pine and Sue Palmer & Her Motel Swing Orchestra.
Also confirmed to appear are a host of gifted area singer-songwriters, including Lisa Sanders, Sara Petite, Sven-Erik Seaholm and rising young jazz-soul troubadour and trumpeter Teagan Taylor.
“I love it!” said Sanders, who has performed at the Street Fair so many times she’s lost count. “It’s a good way to connect with fans that I haven’t seen in a while, because I usually run into them there. It has a real community vibe, and I love that you can buy things from artisans and vendors whose work you might not see in a store. And there’s always the food!
“It feels like a small big street fair — homey, while still having thousands of people come through. It kind of reminds me of Chicago — it’s a big city, but a small town.”
Small is the perfect word to describe what the Street Fair was like early on.
After launching in 1981, the event had no music to speak of until 1983, when local pop-jazz favorites Fattburger performed. The musical offerings grew gradually thereafter, with a major turning point coming in 1992. It was then that the Adams Avenue Business Association expanded the Street Fair to two days and for the first time featured national music acts, which were booked by the Belly Up, one of San Diego’s oldest and most eclectic live music clubs. Lou Curtiss, the founder of the San Diego Folk Festival and recently retired owner of Folk Arts Rare Records, also began to help book acts for the Street Fair in 1992.
“We had 22 bands that year,” Kessler recalled. “They included (former Rolling Stones guitarist) Mick Taylor, Firehose, Third World, Charlie Musselwhite, The Paladins, (gospel legends) the Blind Boys of Alabama and No Doubt.
“In the 25 years that I’ve been doing this, the Street Fair has grown dramatically. For much of the 1980s it was a one-day event, with no music and about 40 vendors, that was held to celebrate efforts to revitalize Normal Heights and the Adams Avenue corridor. It grew into a regionally significant event that mirrors the growth of and accomplishments of the community.”
New to the Street Fair this year is Java Joe’s, the legendary San Diego haven for singer-songwriters that — at its first location in Poway in the late 1980s and early ’90s — provided a musical home for Jewel, Sanders, Steve Poltz and a host of other rising local talents. For the second year in a row, the event will feature the Casbah Stage, which will showcase some of the same indie-rock acts that typically perform at the famed Midtown club it is named after.
Casbah honcho Tim Mays has booked some of the acts for the weekend, teaming with veteran Street Fair talent buyers Steve Kader and Louis Brazier. Between them, the three have produced live music events at numerous venues here, large and small.
“It seemed like the right synergy with Tim being a mentor and a friend, and with the Casbah being a local attraction, like the Street Fair,” said Kader, who is now in his 15th year of booking for the Adams Avenue event.
“The neighborhood is changing and all these new businesses have opened up, which the Street Fair has been a catalyst for. But the Street Fair still has a nice sense of community and that hasn’t changed.”
Street Fair highlights
It will be impossible to catch even half of the 110 musical acts playing at this weekend’s Adams Avenue Street Fair. Unless, that is, you dash frantically to and fro, hearing fleeting snippets of each performer’s set before racing off to the next nearest stage. To help you enjoy a more relaxed pace, here are six likely highlights.
Saturday
Big Jay McNeely, 8:45 p.m., Hawley Blues Stage (corner of Adams Avenue and Hawley Street): This boisterous saxophonist scored his first R&B hit, “The Deacon’s Hop,” in 1949. He also helped pioneer the art of soloing while walking across bar tops in nightclubs. McNeely may be a bit less rambunctious these days, but he can still play with fervor.
The Burning of Rome, 8:30 p.m., Casbah 33rd Street Rock Stage (corner of Adams Avenue and 33rd Street): This four-man, one-woman band has a field-leading six nominations in this year’s San Diego Music Awards. Credit “Year of the Ox,” the group’s fourth and most ambitious album, which mixes neo-art-rock with punk, pop, psychedelia, early-’70s glam and more.
Teagan Taylor Band, 2:45 p.m., Demille’s Stage (corner of Adams Avenue and 35th Street): At 21, this skilled Imperial Beach singer, trumpeter and songwriter already has three increasingly accomplished albums under her belt. She’s also expanded from her jazz roots to add R&B, reggae, rock, hip-hop and more to her stylistic palette.
Sunday
The Album Leaf, 5:45 p.m., Casbah 33rd Street Rock Stage (corner of Adams Avenue and 33rd Street): San Diego’s Jimmy Lavelle created The Album Leaf in 1999 as an intensely atmospheric solo project that morphed into a live band. With world tours, a concert at the Hollywood Bowl and collaborations with Iceland’s Sigur Rós and Red House Painters/Sun Kil Moon mainstay Mark Kozelek under his belt, Lavelle has become an expert at painting absorbing soundscapes.
Lisa Sanders, 6 p.m., Java Joe’s Stage (corner of Adams Avenue and 35th Street): This veteran San Diego troubadour recently released “Shiver,” her eighth and finest album. Equal parts folk, blues, gospel and rock, her heartfelt songs showcase her rich, robust voice with stirring results.
The Kinsey Report, 6 p.m., Hawley Blues Stage (corner of Adams Avenue and Hawley Street): Now celebrating its 30th anniversary, this Indiana-bred band specializes in gritty blues-rock that eschews frills. Its impressive musical rapport can be attributed to the fact that three of its four members — singer-guitarist Donald Kinsey, bassist Kenny Kinsey and drummer Ralph Kinsey — are brothers.
