Kentuck marks 48th year with art, music and food

As Alabama and Tuscaloosa celebrate bicentennials, Northport hosts the 48th version of an internationally known event that began as a centennial celebration.

Saturday and Sunday’s Kentuck Festival of the Arts derived from a party to recognize the city’s 1871 incorporation, at the site where travelers could ford a then-undammed Black Warrior River. Accounts of white settlers in the area date back to a century before that.

Here’s more on one of the most-celebrated, most-beloved local events:

• Originally thought to be called either Canetuck, for sugar growing wild nearby, or Kentuck, for an archaic word meaning shangri-la, or heavenly, the city now known as Northport draws tens of thousands of visitors to the annual fest, built from traditional craft and folk art into a juried show with more than 270 artists on display, and demonstrating. Over the years, the Kentuck Festival grew to include a hands-on children’s art center, along with music and spoken-word stages. Vendors offering comestibles, including food trucks and craft-beer suppliers, bookend Kentuck Park for the two-day event.

• The late Georgine Clarke spun that centennial heritage party into a year-round, permanent establishment, the Kentuck Art Center. Its campus at 503 Main Ave. includes a recently renovated main building with display space, gift shop and offices, adjoined to an art-filled Courtyard of Wonders surrounded by satellite buildings — including the Clarke Building, named for Kentuck’s co-founder and first executive director — that house studios for resident artists in metal, ceramics, woodworking, sculpture, paint and mixed media. During the year, Kentuck hosts monthly Art Night events, exhibits, workshops and other outreach.

• Parking is free around Kentuck Park, and in downtown Northport. Free shuttles run continuously through both days.

• Judges for this year will be Gail Andrews, who retired as longtime director of the Birmingham Museum of Art in 2017, and writer, curator and publisher Tom Patterson of Winston-Salem, N.C.

• Music performed on the Brother Ben Stage includes jazz, gospel, folk, rockabilly, blues and more. Here are the daily lineups:

SATURDAY

• 9:30-10:30 a.m. — MPG Big Band, jazz band from Max Planck Gymnasium High School in Schorndorf, Germany, a Tuscaloosa sister city.

• 11 a.m.-noon — The Birmingham Sunlights, a five-man, four-part harmony a cappella gospel group.

• 12:30-1:45 p.m. — Toby Foyeh and Orchestra Africa, blending traditional Nigerian styles, highlife, afrobeat and yoruba, mixed with rock, pop and jazz.

• 2:15-3:30 p.m. — Cash Back, a Johnny Cash tribute band from Birmingham.

• 3:45-5 p.m. — The Kate Lee and Forrest O’Connor Band, Nashville-based folk duo who have performed from the Grand Ole Opry to Fenway Park.

SUNDAY

• 10-11 a.m. — Alabama Blues Project, featuring advanced students from the local school.

• 11:30-12:30 p.m. — Brighter Day, a bluegrass gospel septet from Tuscaloosa.

• 1-2:15 p.m. — Adron, singer-songwriter-guitarist influenced by Harry Nilsson, Margo Guryan and Brazilian musicians.

• 2:45-4 p.m. — Rob Alley Quintet featuring Jil Chambless; the jazz trumpeter and educator joins longtime Henri’s Notions folk singer and flautist to perform excerpts from The Alabama Songbook, including Civil War anthems, African-American gospel and secular songs, fiddle tunes, temperance songs, love ballads, and more.

The Spoken Word Tent has readings and performances both days as well. The schedule for both days includes:

• 10:30 a.m. — Alabama Student Association for Poetry

• 11:30 a.m. — Improbable Fictions

• 12:30 p.m. — Storyteller Steven Hobbs

• 1:30 p.m. — Celebration of Alabama Writers

• 2:30 p.m. — Hobbs

For more, call 758-1257, send email to kentuck@kentuck.org, or see www.kentuck.org.

• This weekend’s 48th Annual Kentuck Festival of the Arts will be 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday in Kentuck Park, 3401 Fifth St., Northport. The festival is held rain or shine. The Kentuck Art Center’s Gallery shop will be open this weekend, for the first time during a festival.

• Weekend passes are $15; one-day passes $10. Children 12 and younger are admitted free. But leave dogs at home; service animals being the exception.

• Kentuck accepts all major credit cards, though individual artists may have some restrictions. T-shirts and other souvenirs will be for sale near the entrance.