LIMA, OH (WLIO) - Some say you need to pack your bags and head to Chicago to hear real blues music, but Friday and Saturday night the blues came to Lima.
Old City Prime hosted Pickle's Blues Weekend, giving people an opportunity to hear musicians who came all the way from Chicago to perform right in downtown Lima. The opening act was a local band called Prudence, whose members graduated from Shawnee High School in 2020.
Organizers and the headlining act say it's important that people have the chance to experience such an influential genre of music live.
"It's a viable, viable, music that all of our other musics come from. Rock and roll, if the blues wouldn't have been, we wouldn't have got gospel music, we wouldn't have gotten into spiritual music, you wouldn't have gotten into rock and roll, you wouldn't have gotten into country and western," said Jerry "Pickle" Felter, who has been promoting blues music in Lima for over thirty years.
"Blues just is the story of life, blues just tells a story. Whether it's good or bad, or happy or sad. Whether people recognize it or not, we all got the blues in some shape, form, or fashion," said Omari Coleman, the frontman of Omari Coleman Westside Soul from Chicago.
This is the 9th year that Old City Prime has hosted Pickle's Blues Weekend.
