Shawn Holt. Photo by Linda Cunningham.

Shawn Holt would regularly ask his father – the Chicago-blues legend Magic Slim – when he could become a member of his backing band, the Teardrops.

The announcement came 10 days after the final notes of the 2015 Mississippi Valley Blues Festival should have filled LeClaire Park: There would be no 2015 Mississippi Valley Blues Festival.

Citing financial difficulties, on July 15 the Mississippi Valley Blues Society (MVBS) said that it had canceled the festival. This followed a decision in February to move the blues fest from its traditional Independence Day weekend to the Labor Day weekend, and to reduce it from three days to two - changes designed to lessen the chance the event would be flooded out of LeClaire Park, to give the blues society the opportunity to raise more money, and to cut costs. The board was sharply divided on both the date-change and cancellation votes.

There are several cruel ironies here.

The cancellation comes a year after the Blues Foundation honored the festival with a Keeping the Blues Alive award for U.S. festivals, citing the Quad Cities event as "one of the longest-running, most-prestigious blues festivals in the world."

And there was no Fourth of July flooding in LeClaire Park this year, and the weather was rain-free and just about perfect. Had the festival happened at its normal time - as it had for the past 30 years - the MVBS would very likely have shored up its financial position significantly. "It would have been the best weather we've had in 16 years," said MVBS Board Member Ric Burris.

Instead, the organization now faces an existential crisis. Will the MVBS be able to put on a festival next year - as its president and many board members hope to? How will the group rebuild its board and fundraising efforts in the wake of this year's cancellation? And would a Mississippi Valley Blues Society without the blues fest be a shell of its former self - or could it perhaps be a stronger organization more focused on its education programs and smaller concerts?

Los Lonely Boys. Photo by Gabriella McSwann.

For the fact that Los Lonely Boys are around to headline this year's River Roots Live festival, some people might thank God - and the trio of brothers Garza certainly does that. But bassist/singer JoJo also thanked his brother Henry's pliability.

"I think it would've killed anybody else," JoJo said of Henry's horrific fall from a stage in February 2013. "I would have been dead. ... From the moment he fell in the hole, I thought it was completely over. ...

"We give a lot of thanks for Henry's natural ability to be very flexible as part of the reason why he didn't just crunch in half there."

But Henry's recovery has been slow. "Quite honestly," JoJo said in a phone interview last week, "he's not 100 percent still, and a lot of people don't know that. ...

On paper, the Wallflowers' 2012 album Glad All Over has the whiff of trying to recapture past glories.

It was the band's first album of new material in seven years, a hiatus that included a rote best-of compilation, a couple tours, and two solo albums by frontman/songwriter Jakob Dylan.

But talking to Dylan last week - and, more importantly, listening to the album - it's clear that the band and its leader aren't crassly trying to capitalize on fondness for the quadruple-platinum Bringing Down the Horse (and its chart-topping single, "One Headlight") from 1996. As the All Music Guide correctly summarized, with Glad All Over the Wallflowers "now feel the freedom to mess around, and they've come up with one of their loosest, liveliest records that not-so-coincidentally is one of their best."

So the long absence of the Wallflowers - headlining River Roots Live on August 17 - can be explained by Dylan wanting the band to survive and thrive. He obviously views it as his band - less in the sense of belonging to him than being his primary musical outlet.

Jessica Hernandez & the Deltas

Jessica Hernandez had a good story to tell about being signed by the venerable jazz label Blue Note Records. She canceled a meeting with the company's president in New York, and instead had him fly to Detroit to hear her in a loft space she created above her family's bakery.

She got a record deal.

That was a few years ago, and recently her tale turned more typical. Warner Music Group acquired the label from Universal (a deal that was finalized in July), and Hernandez - who had been working on her debut album - found herself in the classic music-industry lurch.