The 2025 Mineral Point Blues & Roots Fest will take place on Friday and Saturday, August 15-16, at the Mineral Point Opera House in Mineral Point, WI. Tickets are available by clicking here or at the Opera House box office.
Boo Mullarky
Friday, Aug. 15
5 pm (Library Park)
Born in Beaumont, Texas and raised in Southwestern Louisiana, Boo Mullarky is a native born Cajun. Boo’s great uncle, Minos Broussard, was one of the original guitarists for the Hackberry Ramblers and gave Boo his first lesson on the six-string at the age of five. Boo has been playing guitar ever since and specializes in rural Southern picking styles, including blues, ragtime, hokum, and Cajun. When not performing with The Cajun Strangers, one of the Midwest’s premier Cajun music dance bands, he busks as a one-human jug band medicine show playing guitar, kazoo, washboard, old car horns, bells, with a suitcase for a drum. The Strangers’ first two CDs were on the Swallow Records label and both won the esteemed “Prix Dehors De Nous” (The Best Outside of Us) from the Cajun French Music Association in Louisiana. Their third and latest CD is Louisiana Boogie, released in 2014.
Lee Kanehira Trio
Friday, Aug. 15
6:30 pm
Lee Kanehira is a singer and blues pianist master of boogie-woogie and classic blues piano styles. She was born in Tagawa, Japan, and played classical piano as a child but taught herself to play and sing after falling in love with blues. She has now played in Korea, China, Canada, Europe, and the United States to which she has returned every summer since 2008, touring now as a member of the Cash Box Kings as well as with her own trio.
After winning the 2018 Chicago Blues Piano Contest, Lee was invited to perform at a 2019 Chicago Blues Fest tribute to legendary blues pianist Otis Spann, and invited back to play the 2024 Chicago Blues Fest mainstage tribute to Spann, where she wowed thousands with her performance.Her albums as a bandleader include Union Meetin’ (2014), Lee’s Boogie (2017) a lovely old school solo album, and most recently, The Chicago Blues Trio!! (2024) with John W. Lauler and Derek Hendrickson.
Jimmy Burns Band
Friday, Aug. 15
8:45 pm
Jimmy Burns left Dublin, Mississippi for Chicago where as a teen he sang street corner doo-wop and recorded with The Medallionaires. He then issued several solo small-label 45s singing R&B and teen ballads in his soulful tenor that brings to mind Sam Cooke. But he stepped back from music for a couple of decades to raise six children and run his Uncle Mickey’s Barbecue business. He says he’s not a blues singer like his older brother Eddie Burns who went from Mississippi to Detroit and became a cohort of John Lee Hooker. Nonetheless after his long hiatus from music, Jimmy secured a secure niche in the blues world after recording the award-winning album, Leaving Here Walking, in 1996 for the venerable Delmark label and followed with five more, in addition to Snake Eyes for which he reunited with his bluesman brother, Eddie, in 2002. He has toured the world several times over and now returns to Mineral Point for a return engagement.
Too Sick Charlie
Saturday, Aug. 16
3 pm (Library Park)
Too Sick Charlie may call Wisconsin home but his music is deeply rooted in the blues of the north Mississippi Hill country. As a one-man-band playing in the spirit of his inspiration, bluesman R.L. Burnside, he picks hip-grinding licks on a three-string cigar box guitar, rack harp, and amplified foot drum. The man lays a formidable rumble and racket of uncompromising, no-nonsense roots-music.
Too Sick Charlie (Eric Heiligenstein, M.D.), winner of the 2021 Paramount Blues Challenge (solo-duo), has been described as a traditional Upper Midwestern cigar box guitar blues musician.
Elsa Harris & Company
Saturday, Aug. 16
4:15 pm
Singer, pianist, songwriter, and teacher Elsa Harris may not be a household name, but it’s very likely you have heard her sing. Gospel music has been her life’s passion, and she has sung backup on the recordings of Muddy Waters, Minnie Riperton, Peter Paul and Mary, The Rotary Connection, Ramsey Lewis, Phil Upchurch, David Bromberg, The Rev. Scottie Williams, and others. But foremost, for decades she sang as a member of the famed Jessy Dixon Singers and with them performed at the Newport Jazz Festival, Radio City Music Hall, Carnegie Hall, The Royal Albert Hall, and on Saturday Night Live, where they backed Paul Simon with whom she recorded and toured the world for eight years. More recently Elsa Harris has been an activist against human trafficking, performing at events supporting the cause against modern-day slavery. Her most recent CD, on the Sirens label, is titled, I Thank God.
Accompanying her will be vocalist and actress Felicia Coleman-Evans who was featured in the first ever gospel performance at Milan’s La Scala Opera House. She was soloist in the Carnegie Hall tribute to Leontyne Price and sang at President Jimmy Carter’s Inaugural Prayer Breakfast, the Congressional Black Caucus, and at the 25th anniversary of the March on Washington.
Rip Lee Pryor Trio
Saturday, Aug. 16
5:15 pm
Richard “Rip” Lee Pryor sings and performs with harmonica and guitar, carrying forward the old school blues traditions of his father, harmonica legend Snooky Pryor, who was one of the first blues musicians to record in post-war Chicago. Rip played and toured in his father’s band—sometimes with his brothers—until going solo in 2008 after his father’s death. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree: even when performing his own compositions, Rip evokes his father’s era and style, especially the raucous street-corner sound of Chicago’s old Maxwell Street blues scene. He occasionally will include some of his father’s material in his sets. His recordings include Pitch a Boogie Woogie, Nobody But Me, and Sugar Daddy Blues.
Chicago Soul Revue with Willie White and Jojo Murray
Saturday, Aug. 16
8:45 pm
The Chicago Soul Revue recalls the soul sound of 1960s and ’70s Chicago R & B. Soul blues is still alive and thriving down south as well as in Chicago’s myriad off the beaten path South and West side bars and clubs where singers like Willie White and Jojo Murray and regularly perform for eager fans.
Willie White is one of Chicago’s premier soul singers, as well as a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. After moving to Chicago from his native Mississippi, he first played drums in his uncle Jimmy White’s “Concepts Band.” White is also adept at playing keyboards and performed with soul stars Willie Clayton, Bobby Rush, Little Milton, and others before stepping out front to lead his own band in the mid 1990s. He has recorded a handful of singles and in 2008 released the fine album, Party Hardy. His recent recordings, Jukin’ and Pop It Off, are getting airplay on southern soul radio.
Jojo Murray has been singing and performing soul music for more than 60 years. He first sang gospel with the Golden Jubilees back in Shelby, Mississippi before moving to Chicago as a teen. In 1971 he recorded his first single, Why Baby, and followed with other 45s, plus an album, Real Man Steppin’ Out (1989). Over the years he has also contributed his excellent guitar and voice to the recordings of others. His poignant soul ballad, From the Inside (Coday Records), from his 2016 album of the same name, still gets play on the southern soul circuit.