Past Blues Events in Southern California
This page is a chronicle, not a live listing — a look back at the people, venues, and festivals that shaped Southern California's blues scene roughly between the mid-2000s and the early 2020s. It draws on publicly documented festival history rather than firsthand reporting from this site, and it's offered in the spirit of an independent fan journal looking back at a regional music scene, not as an official record from any festival organizer or blues society. For a snapshot of one specific event covered in more depth, see our page on the Simi Valley Blues Festival, and browse our photo gallery for images from the era. For how the current calendar works, see our concert calendar guide.
Mid-to-late 2000s: new festivals take root
By the mid-2000s, the long-running Topanga Blues Festival — organized since 1982 by the Southern California Blues Society and held at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum — was already a fixture of the region's blues calendar, having hosted artists like Etta James, Willie Dixon, Otis Rush, Big Joe Turner, Junior Wells, and Paul Butterfield over its history. The society's reach extended into the national competitive blues circuit as well: in 2004, Southern California-sponsored artist Zac Harmon won the Blues Foundation's International Blues Challenge for Best Unsigned Blues Band, a result that put a regional showcase on a national stage. A newer entry joined the circuit in 2006, when Simi Valley musician Michael John Basowski founded what became known as the Simi Valley Blues Festival, with the nonprofit Write4Hope helping run logistics for its first three years at Oak County Park. Simi Valley musician and actor Mickey Jones emceed that festival from its very first year.
The 2010s: growth, a hiatus, and a rename
The decade brought mixed fortunes for the region's festivals. The long-running original Long Beach Blues Festival, one of the bigger blues gatherings on the West Coast, went on hiatus in 2010 and was not revived under that name, leaving a gap later filled by newer events. Meanwhile, the Simi Valley festival kept growing: by around its tenth year it had outgrown Oak County Park, moved to Moorpark College, and been renamed the Ventura County Blues Festival to reflect its wider draw. Topanga Blues Festival continued its run through the decade, with Phillip Walker headlining in 2009 and Eddy Clearwater headlining in 2013, while adding family-friendly programming like harmonica workshops alongside the main stage.
2020–2022: a pandemic pause and a return
Like most live events, Southern California's blues festivals were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Topanga Blues Festival's 2020 edition was canceled, and the festival resumed in 2021. By May 2022, it had reached its 37th annual edition, with Tail Dragger and John Primer among the headliners — a sign that the region's core festival tradition survived the disruption even as some of the organizations and venues behind earlier decades of events changed hands or wound down. This site exists to document and celebrate that history as an independent guide; it is not affiliated with the Southern California Blues Society or any current festival organizer, and makes no claim to represent them.
