Bring lawn chairs, blankets and your dancing shoes to Bayou in the Barn at St. Ambrose Cellars on Friday, July 5.
Blues and zydeco musicians from across the nation are heading to Beulah, Michigan for the annual Bayou in the Barn. In addition to live music and lots of dancing, there will be silent and live auctions featuring kayaks and trips, yard games and food vendors who will be cooking up Southern cuisine from scratch with Michigan ingredients.
Fundraising proceeds benefit Grow Benzie’s community center and youth and educational programs. Grow Benzie’s mission is to enrich the Northern Michigan region by fostering positive action to increase access to healthful foods, jobs, life skills and each other and to provide a community place that supports and nurtures these activities.
Bayou in the Barn Event Schedule
5 p.m. // CHARLIE MILLARD BAND
Charlie Millard started playing piano at age 11. By 13 he was performing at churches, farmers markets and weddings. At 15, he started writing songs with his father, Jerry Millard, and now at 22 fronts his own indie-rock outfit, the Charlie Millard Band. “Singer-songwriter Charlie Millard is a complicated mix of yesterday’s vintage and current musical Americana. He plays his songs at local cafes and street fairs around Northern Michigan, but his sound would be equally at home in a Hemingway-era pub in the 1920s, surrounded by a cloud of cigar smoke and Lost Generation peers.” -Kristi Kates, Northern Express
6:30 p.m. // COUSIN CURTISS
Cousin Curtiss combines the picking style, soul and energy of John Butler, the incendiary harmonica style of John Popper and the multi-instrumentalist-live-looping talents of Keller Williams. Cousin Curtiss’s life and music have been featured by Business Insider, MSN, Fox News, USA Today, Cosmopolitan Magazine and Daily Mail UK.
7:30 p.m. // Community Toast & Recognition
7:35 p.m. // Live Auction
8 p.m. // CEDRIC BURNSIDE
The 39-year-old still lives on several acres not far from the Holly Springs, Mississippi home where he was raised by “Big Daddy,” his grandfather and late singer/songwriter/guitarist R.L. Burnside, whom Cedric famously played with, just as his own father, drummer Calvin Jackson, did. Cedric was literally born to the blues, more specifically, the “rhythmically unorthodox” Hill Country variant which emerged from Mississippi, where he grew up surrounded (and influenced) by Junior Kimbrough, Jessie May Hemphill and Otha Turner, as well as delta musicians T-Model Ford and Paul “Wine” Jones.
9:45 p.m. // K. JONES & THE BENZIE PLAYBOYS
Celebrating two decades of delivering the roots sound of southwest Louisiana’s Creole, Cajun and zydeco music to the Great Lakes region, the Benzie Playboys continue to build their fan base with live performances for two-steppin’, waltzes and smoking red hot zydeco dancing.