Stamford, CT – Fans of the blues will get a chance to hear R&B legend, Frank Bluestein, as he joins the all star music roster of this years, Groovefest. The free non-profit event is putting together a group of live performances for this day event that takes place on August 15, 2009. The sessions will be recorded and distributed on the web where people can see them. The audio recordings are scheduled to be released in  a fundraising CD to help build a youth center in Bridgeport, CT some time in 2010.

Getting the groups together took a considerable amount of time. It was not easy to get cooperation from various management during these busy summer months. Many of the performers were locked up into various commitments.

This years Groovefest has changed considerably. It has moved from its native Chicago. The festival originally began in the Windy City’s notorious Rogers Park.  The collection of artists came from different areas of the city to meet and jam in places like the Home Grown Café, The Green Mill and various rooftop parties. This is the first time that it will appear in Norwalk, CT.

Bluestein and Fritz Machauley organized the independent festival after their inhouse staff members reported money missing. There is an ongoing investigation concerning fraud centering around missing contributions. Now the artists are taking control of the situation and moving the music festival out of Chicago and into a new location.

Frank Bluestein is really excited about the move to Norwalk, “The east coast neighborhoods are really mixed when it comes to music. There is a large Spanish speaking population here that mostly listens to hip hop and rap. Then you have a lot of traditional ethnic music here in the Mexican and Italian tradition. Blues is not something that these folks are largely accustomed to. Then you have a large group of Generation X’ers here that still get together on stage to create their own personal homage to Led Zeppelin. The mix here is very strange. I don’t know what kind of crowd this is going to draw.”

Getting rehearsal space for the music festival has been very easy. Bridgeport has had a long history of having empty warehouses and industrial space.  This years turn out will predict whether or not the festival will take place here in 2010. Frank Bluestein is hopeful that it will and so is the local blues community.