Springing The Blues Festival Takes Over Jacksonville Beach This Weekend

The beach goes blues this weekend. Springing The Blues, one of Florida's longest-running free music festivals, returns to the Seawalk Pavilion in Jacksonville Beach April 10 through 12 with three days of national, regional, and local blues artists playing the pavilion stage with the Atlantic as the backdrop. Admission is free, the sand is a few steps from the stage, and the festival's no-frills charm has made it a quiet East Coast blues institution since the late 1990s.

The lineup spans traditional Delta blues, Chicago electric, Texas roadhouse, and the kind of modern blues-rock that makes purists grumble but draws the younger crowds. Food trucks and local vendors line the pavilion plaza, and the crowd spreads onto the sand by Saturday afternoon.

If you're going: park at the 1st Street South municipal lots and walk to the pavilion. Bring a beach chair. The weather in April at Jacksonville Beach is about as perfect as the Atlantic coast gets.

Sources: Springing The Blues, Visit Jacksonville events