Bedford Blues and BBQ Festival 9/05/09

Bedford Blues and BBQ Festival 9/05/09

We went to the Bedford Blues and BBQ Festival today at about 3PM. My over all take of it was about a B minus to a C plus.

The following are some ratings:

1. Need more shaded areas such as tents or what ever. I know this is really more of a night time event since they have the really big good bands scheduled for the evening. However Chris Watson was playing and he was good and drew a fairly good crowd for a mid/late afternoon show with out any shade for the general public. I had seen on the web were the reserved seats had been sold out, but over half were empty for his show. I think it was due more to the heat as his music was pleasing, keep in mind that we are 50+.
2. It was fairly costly for the normal folk, $10 USD for parking and $5 PP to get in. We parked for free having a handicap-parking sticker. Beer was $5 and they only had Coors Light versus Coors and Coors Light. For the two of us we had two small pork sliders, one large peach cobbler, a pile of string onions, one margarita, one beer the and the price tag was 25 bucks.
3. The food we had except for the peach cobbler was good. If you order the onion rings ask for extra crispy if you like them the way the demo pile looks. The demo pile was medium brown while ours was light brown. My fault for not saying anything up front. The peach cobbler was very warm which is good, but few peaches and it tasted more like Bisquik.
4. It was really too warm for me to spend much time with the vendors so it is hard to say what goods were available but there was some cool looking stuff. We might go back tonight when it is cooler.
5. I think they will need more ticket selling places as the day goes on as I expect the participation will be much greater. The tickets I refer to are to get food and drink. They had enough food types and beer/drink tents that unless they get overwhelmed by patrons they should keep up. Unless there were more ticket sales areas I think that will be their greatest bottleneck.

Here are some shots. Looks like they plan two stages, this one is in the parking lot. You will certainly want to bring lawn chairs for this area.



Here is a shot from the East side of the field just past some of the vendors of the stage Chris Watson.



Here is a shot from in the general public area, this is where you see all the empty seats. Again I liked his music so I think the heat and the threat of rain may have had something to do with it.



We chose to try the pork sliders at Smokin Rednecks. They were good but they could have put a bit more meat on the sliders to cover the whole bun. Each slider was 3 bucks and it was worth it. They had three choices of sauces, not sure if I got the names correct but they ranged from Sissy, Almost a man, and You are the Man. We had the Almost a man and while it had some heat, it was very tasty and I would have it again. I did not try the other two but often the real hot ones let the heat over power the flavor and I do enjoy some heat. I did notice after eating I was sweating so not sure if the sauce or the sun caused it.



The next shot is where we got the blooming onion straws and they were tasty but could have been browned up just a bit more. There is a lot of them.



This was one shady place where you could eat. The crowd was polite in that after folks were done eating they vacated the tables but the over all crowd was light so I am sure it will be different when more folks show up tonight. Again I stress bring some chairs with you.



I am very glad that Bedford has decided to start the Blues Festival back up again and I hope they keep it small and profitable so they do not end up canceling it again. I am not a resident of Bedford but the old city council members I think made a bunch of bad decisions and it seems the city is getting back on track so something has changed over the last few years. I think I had heard that the residents turned down a tax hike of some type and as punishment the library either did or was going to close (is is open now) and I think the stopping the festival may have been part of that. I think Bedford is a fine neighboring city to Euless and I do support Bedford and its future. I had heard that the reason the festival stopped in the past was it became unprofitable due to weather. I think as Euless did, we let the festival (Arbor Day's) get too big and weather can kill you when you spend a bunch to support such an event.

Pj