It was a big day for the blues at the Monterey Jazz Festival on Saturday.
Mr. Sipp, the Missippi blues belter who won the The B.B. King Entertainer of the Year trophy at the 2025 Blues Muisc Awards, opened up the festival’s big Jimmy Lyons Stage on Day 2 of the this three-day festival at the Monterey County Fairgrounds and had fans thoroughly grooving along to his guitar-drenched tunes.
“Can we turn this place into a juke joint real quick?” Sipp asked the crowd. “In a juke joint, they don’t sit down. Get up! Everybody get on up!”
He didn’t have issue that command a third time, as people rose to their feet and acted as if they weren’t in Monterey, but rather at Po’ Monkey’s or some other cool juke joint in the Mississippi Delta.
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Although Sipp had pushed the bar sky high, San Jose’s own J.C. Smith Band managed to clear it with its own rough-and-rowdy hourlong set a bit later in the day on the Tim Jackson Garden Stage.
Smith, who is blessed with a muscular singing voice and is an absolute beast on the guitar, brought a real party atmosphere to the often-quite-sedate Garden Stage area. It started with the beach balls — something you’re presumably more likely to see at a Los Angeles Dodgers game than a jazz festival — which were tossed out into the crowd during, appropriately enough, the Albert King favorite “Let’s Have a Natural Ball.”
Smith is a charismatic frontman, who just eats up the bright lights and big moments. Yet, he’s also a generous one, providing plenty of space for his talented bandmembers — drummer Tim Richard, bassist Stevie Q, On Bass, saxophonist Noel Catura and pianist Scott Porter — to shine.
Smith closed his winning set with a screaming version of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” which brought the guitarist, bassist and saxophonist down from the stage and out into the crowd for some prime boogie-woogie time with the fans.
“I had a great time,” Smith at the conclusion of the set. “This is the most fun I’ve had with my clothes on in 20 years.”
It was another triumph for the San Jose bluesman, who has been on quite a roll lately and, notably, performed on stage with Willie Nelson and Sheryl Crow earlier this month.
San Jose’s J.C. Smith Band rocks the crowd at Monterey Jazz Festival on Sept. 27, 2025 (Jim Harrington, Bay Area News Group).
Dianne Reeves also delivered the goods on Saturday, playing a excellent cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” and, in general, illustrating all the reasons why she’s a five-time Grammy winner. Like pretty much all the other artists in attendance, Reeves sounded thrilled to on the stage at this wonderful music festival.
“When I leave here, and I go into the next place, it’s all going to be good,” she told the crowd. “I feel the healing in this place.”
The festival was expected to continue on Sunday with Rene Marie, Christian Sands, Pete Escovedo and many other artists. For more information, visit montereyjazz.com.