The volunteer-run nonprofit, founded in 1984, completely revamped its website, mvbs.org – with much more content than before. It’s also returning to Davenport’s LeClaire Park, later than usual, Sept. 17-18, with its signature event, the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival.
The website overhaul, led by the Rock Island-based design firm Pixouls, is broken into main sections of “Listen,” “Preserve” and “Learn.” MVBS president Bob Clevenstine of Rock Island says that kept the group busy during COVID closures.
“That's kind of how we spent our pandemic vacation. We couldn't put any artists out there. We didn't have a way of streaming anything with our old website. We realized that we were kind of stuck in an analog world up until early 2020 and we pivoted because obviously things were changing throughout the whole year in 2020. We decided to start digitizing our analog assets we converted a whole bunch of VHS tape and Betamax tape.”
Besides highlights from Blues Fests between 1985 and 2019, the new site includes interviews with blues artists and documentaries, including a half-hour one done by WQPT on the society’s 35 years of festivals.
Clevenstine says Pixouls did “an awesome job” on the website redesign.
"We've got a marketing and communications committee and they worked through a lot of stuff with them. I had to go digging around and find all these old tapes we've had sitting around for years and unfortunately we don't have all of them.”
Clevenstine has been an MVBS lifetime member many years, and stepped up his involvement in 2015, when the society crashed for lack of funding and canceled that year’s Blues Fest.
The first Blues Festival was held in LeClaire Park in July 1985, and MVBS has been
honored by the National Blues Foundation as the Best Blues Society in the country three times – in 1988, 1993 and 2014.
Clevenstine says the website update was vital, in part to improve the society outreach and public awareness in the Quad-Cities.
“’Cause I'm not sure everybody totally appreciates us for everything we do outside of the festival. The festival is certainly a traditional community event for a number of years and that’s what we're primarily known for, but we have a great education program. Another thing we did during the pandemic was develop some educational materials to serve online, and we've had a response from over 30 states, Ireland, England, New Zealand -- from educators looking for our video material with Hal Reed, Kevin Burt and Reverend Robert Jones.”
All educational material is provided free to schools. In a typical year, MVBS coordinates four to nine weeks of Blues in the Schools.
A weeklong residency includes 10-12 performances and workshops in schools, libraries, and community centers in the Q-C and surrounding areas. Each artist also provides an open-to-the-public presentation for all ages. All performances are free and expose a wide array of the community to the rich history, heritage, and sounds of blues music.
“We reach several thousand students every year with that program. And it's one of those things that like a lot of people, a lot of folks, even our city partners still just kind of refer to us as the Mississippi Valley Blues Fest rather than the Mississippi Valley Blues Society. And we're always trying to correct that -- the fest is a primary annual fundraising event, that allows us to do all the other aspects of our mission.”
Its last blues fest was in July 2019, at the River Bend Park at The Bend, East Moline.
LeClaire Park has been the primary home of the Blues Fest since its inception in 1985. In 1994 and 1995, the fest was held in Moline along the Mississippi River, and flooding forced MVBS to move out of LeClaire Park to other spots in Davenport in 1993, 2001, 2008, 2013 and 2014.
The MVBS presented the annual festival around the July 4 weekend every year until 2015, when financial challenges forced its cancellation. It had been scheduled to take place Sept. 5-6, 2015, at LeClaire Park, away from its traditional July dates to avoid the possibility of flooding along the river.
The festival returned July 1-2, 2016, to LeClaire Park.
Clevenstine says the society wanted to be back in the park this year, not only for the riverfront setting, but also to avoid the extra costs every time they move – for things like stage lights, sound systems, etc. They moved to September this year in part to avoid conflicting with other events there, and avoid flooding in LeClaire Park.
"We decided to keep it at LeClaire Park because that's really our anchor. It's kind of our historic location – nothing beats music along there at the bandshell. It's just fantastic.”
The Blues Fest will overlap on Saturday, Sept. 18 with the first day of the Quad City Arts Riverssance Festival of Fine Art, at Lindsay Park, the Village of East Davenport. Riverssance will end at 5 p.m. that day, while the blues music will go into the evening. Clevenstine doesn’t foresee any conflicts.
“I think we might be actually kind of complementary to that. I think our biggest hurdle this year was, the Palmer School of Chiropractic is having their alumni event.”
For more information on the Blues Society, visit mvbs.org.
