Just in time for its 30th anniversary in 2014, the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival has been honored with a Keeping the Blues Alive Award from the international Blues Foundation of Memphis TN.  The coveted award, in the U.S. Festival category, is the equivalent of lifetime achievement recognition.

The Blues Foundation notes that the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival has become "one of the longest running, most prestigious blues festivals in the world. Held on the shores of the Mississippi River in Davenport, Iowa, this event features music on two outdoor stages and educational presentations. Four different times, the festival has moved due to river flooding, but each time, festival organizers have been up to the task. Beginning in 1995 with Honeyboy Edwards, the festival inaugurated its RiverRoad Award to honor the true legends of the blues. Thus far, 36 men and women have been so honored."  The Festival is also the only major blues festival in the nation to be produced by a non-profit, all-volunteer organization?the Mississippi Valley Blues Society.

Each year, The Blues Foundation presents the Keeping the Blues Alive (KBA) Awards to individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to the Blues world.   Unlike the Blues Music Awards, which recognize the past year's best in recordings and performance voted on by thousands of The Blues Foundation's members, the KBAs are awarded to non-performers strictly on the basis of merit by a select panel of blues professionals. Affiliated organizations, past KBA recipients and members of The Blues Foundation's Board of Directors are eligible to submit nominations.

The Mississippi Valley Blues Festival was nominated for the KBA award by musician Michael "Hawkeye" Herman, himself a 1998 KBA recipient for Education and a former member of the board of directors of the Blues Foundation. In his nomination, Hawkeye noted that "The 2014 KBA Award would be a most auspicious way of honoring this event's 30 years of hard work and dedication to 'Keeping the Blues Alive' in both spirit and action."

The Blues Foundation will present 20 individuals and organizations with KBA awards during a recognition luncheon Friday, January 24, 2014, at the Downtown Memphis Doubletree, during the International Blues Challenge weekend of events.

Congratulations to the 2014 Keeping the Blues Alive Award recipients:

1. Affiliated Organization: Crossroads Blues Society of Illinois - Rockford, Illinois
2. Art: Cristen Craven Barnard - Senatobia, Mississippi
3. Club: Kingston Mines - Chicago, Illinois
4. Education: Tas Cru - Chaumont, New York
5. Festival (International): Cazorla Blues Festival - Cazorla, Spain
6. Festival (U.S.): Mississippi Valley Blues Festival - Davenport, Iowa
7. Film, Television and Video: Stefan Grossman - Sparta, New Jersey
8. Historical Preservation: George Mitchell - Fort Myers, Florida
9. International: The Royal Mail Hotel - Goodna, Queensland, Australia
10. Journalism: Gene Tomko - Lafayette, Louisiana
11. Literature: Gerard Herzhaft - Lyon, France
12. Manager: Marcia Weaver - Jackson, Mississippi
13. Photography: Dick Waterman - Oxford, Mississippi
14. Producer: Tom Hambridge - Nashville, Tennessee
15. Promoter: Myron Mu - San Francisco, California
16. Publicist: Frank Roszak - North Hills, California
17. Radio (Commercial): Jerry Schaefer - East Islip, New York
18. Radio (Public): Larry Lisk - St. Petersburg, Florida
19. Record Label: Stony Plain Records - Edmonton, Alberta
20. Special Committee Award: Blue Star Connection - Winter Park, Colorado

The Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band will close out the 29^th Mississippi Valley Blues Festival on Saturday July 6 on the Bandshell in Davenport's LeClaire Park.  Sponsored in part by Wieblers Harley-Davidson of Davenport, Shepherd's set will show why Guitar World named him the world's #3 blues guitarist?right after B. B. King and Eric Clapton.

Still barely in his 30s, the Louisiana-born axeman and songsmith has been selling millions of albums, throwing singles into the Top 10, shining a light on the rich blues of the past and forging ahead with his own modern twist on a classic sound he has embodied since his teens. He met Stevie Ray Vaughn at 7 and shared the stage with New Orleans legend Bryan Lee at 13.

From 1995 on, Shepherd took seven singles into the Top 10, and holds the record for the longest-running album on the Billboard Blues Charts with Trouble Is.   Shepherd has been nominated for five Grammy Awards, and has received two Billboard Music Awards, and two Blues Music Awards.

In 2007, he released a critically-acclaimed and two-time Grammy-nominated DVD-CD project, 10 Days Out: Blues from the Backroads. The film and album document Kenny Wayne Shepherd as he travels the country to jam with and interview the last of the authentic blues musicians, many of them now gone. As they tour the backroads, Shepherd, with members of the Double Trouble Band, play with a host of blues greats including Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, blues harp master Jerry "Boogie" McCain, Cootie Stark,  John Dee Holeman, Etta Baker, and Henry Townsend with Honeyboy Edwards.  There's also a concert session with the surviving members of Muddy Waters' and Howlin' Wolf's bands, including luminaries such as Hubert Sumlin, Willie "Big Eyes" Smith, and Pinetop Perkins.

"It's exciting to have such a name and talent as Kenny Wayne Shepherd at the BluesFest," said Bob Covemaker, co-chair of the committee that books acts for the festival.  "His energy is perfect for drawing in more young people, the future of the blues."

Kenny Wayne Shepherd is one of 27 acts on two stages at the Blues Festival, which begins at 3:00 p.m. on Thursday July 4 and runs through July 6.  Free workshops by festival artists are scheduled for all three days, and BlueSKool for the kids runs Friday and Saturday.

Discount advance tickets are available until June 30 from Hy-Vee stores in the Quad-Cities, Clinton, and Muscatine, by calling the Mississippi Valley Blues Society at 563-32-BLUES, or online at www.mvbs.org.  Gate admission is $20 per day, with children 14 and under free if accompanied by a paying adult.

Besides the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band, this year's artists include, Mighty Sam McClain, Walter Trout, Southern Hospitality, John Primer (who will receive the RiverRoad Lifetime Achievement Award), C. J. Chenier, W. C. Clark, The 44s, Anthony Gomes, Samantha Fish, and Davina & the Vagabonds?among a total of 27 acts on two stages.

Also this year the festival will see the first-ever Mississippi Valley Blues Challenge.  Three bands from within a 175-mile radius of the Quad-Cities will compete in the final round on July 5, with the winner playing a full set on July 6 at the festival and representing the Mississippi Valley Blues Society at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis in January 2014.

Preston Shannon was working and performing in Memphis during the 1960s and '70s, when "Soulsville USA" rivaled Detroit's Motown. Stax Records ruled the airwaves with Booker T & the MGs laying down the backing "Memphis Soul Stew" for hits by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and Wilson Pickett, while over at Hi Records producer and songwriter Willie Mitchell was working with Al Green and Otis Clay. It was a magic time. You can hear those soul influences in Preston Shannon's music, but he doesn't acknowledge the soul connection.

"I am really a blues man," Shannon declared in a recent phone interview. "I know the blues, I've experienced the blues, I play the blues. You know, when I recorded all my CDs, the reason I inserted R&B ... was because at the time it was so hard to get airplay for the blues."

"You know the saying that you got to be in the right place at the right time?" singer Kim Massie asked in a recent phone interview. "It wasn't until I came to St. Louis where it was like, 'This is the place I'm supposed to be!' Everything started to happen. One thing led to another."

Kim Massie is not a household name, even in the context of the blues. She has become an institution in the great blues and jazz city of St. Louis over the past 10 years, twice winning the Riverfront Times' female-vocalist-of-the-year award, and she's the featured artist twice a week at the blues club Beale on Broadway. Yet she rarely performs outside of her hometown -- trips to Hungary, Seattle, San Francisco, Kansas City, and Washington, D.C., but no tours. St. Louis is a place like Chicago or New Orleans where blues musicians can find enough work that they don't have to leave.

Mike and Nanci Livermore of the Mississippi Valley Blues Society's Entertainment Committee "discovered" Massie in St. Louis and were so impressed with her show that they suggested the committee get her for the 2010 festival. The committee loved her powerful, soulful singing, which STLBlues.net described as "the voice of God with growling nuances of Etta James."