The Palm Springs Women’s Jazz Festival is branching out beyond jazz.
The Palm Springs Women’s Jazz and Blues Association is the nonprofit that produces the festival. After a decade-plus of successful jazz fests, the organization in 2025 instead produced Blues at the Woodstock, trading the sweet jazz harmonies for raw and emotional blues power.
In 2026, Blues at the Woodstock is back, taking place on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 4 and 5, at Hotel Zoso.
“The Palm Springs Women’s Jazz Festival has existed since 2013, and our mission primarily has been to focus on jazz, but we think that we have done as much as we can do for the appreciation of female jazz musicians and performers,” said executive producer Lucy DeBardelaben during a recent phone interview. “Jazz in Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley has just proliferated. There’s been a resurgence, and we think we’ve done our part to contribute to that. The other part of our mission is blues.”
As it turns out, the Palm Springs Women’s Jazz Festival helped the organization find some great voices in the blues world.
“We were looking for female blues singers,” DeBardelaben said. “They’re out there, but in particular, we were looking for those blues singers who sang classic traditional blues like Mississippi Delta blues, Chicago blues, Texas blues. They almost do not exist, because most performers are singing rock blues or country blues, because that’s where the money is. There’s still an audience for that traditional classic blues, but no one’s really putting that effort in, unless you go south or go to Chicago. We decided that we are going to find female performers who can sing that traditional classic blues. … We thought at first, it’s going to be a little difficult, but we have been pleasantly surprised by the women who have come forward to keep those blues genres alive.”
DeBardelaben said that Blues at the Woodstock will pay tribute to a blues icon with whom fans will be familiar—even if they don’t realize it.
“Last year we had a film on Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton, who sang ‘Hound Dog’ and made it famous, and she wrote ‘Ball and Chain,’ which was made famous by Janis Joplin,” she said. “‘Big Mama’ Thornton was also very instrumental in rock ’n’ roll, besides blues, so her influence goes way, way, way back. This year, we are going to do a tribute to Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton, because she was just such a prolific performer, and she doesn’t get the recognition that she should. Kimberly Nichole has curated this wonderful true-to-form tribute to ‘Big Mama’ Thornton, which will be on Friday night.”
The event will balance an appreciation for old and new blues, while honoring female musicians and the difficulties they continue to face.
“We want to recognize the struggle, pay homage to the work, and honor the incredible feminist legacy of the blues women, and we are doing that by bringing in artists like Miriah Avila, who has this phenomenal voice,” DeBardelaben said. “It’s just this raw soul voice, and her idol is Barbara Mason, who was a soul R&B singer back in the ’60s. Mariah Avila is in her 30s, and she sings her music and just does such an awesome job of her performance. That’s how we keep it alive.”
Joining Avila and Nichole on the lineup are J’Cenae, Martha Redbone, and Dr. Gail Johnson and the Blues All-Stars.
“I book the artists myself. I do my research online on YouTube, and I also create the playlist of blues that I want them to sing,” DeBardelaben said. “It either comes from their own music—which we’ve done with Miriah Avila, because she’s soul and R&B, and J’Cenae out of Mississippi, who has won a lot of music awards for her soul and R&B music—(or) we have Kimberly Nichole and Martha Redbone, who are going to sing blues songs from a different playlist. It’s not the music that they traditionally sing, but they have agreed to come and perform the songs of these artists, true to form.”
While the previous Blues at the Woodstock event and many of the Palm Springs Women’s Jazz Festivals featured Grammy Award-winning artists, this year’s lineup will honor independent musicians.
“They do not have these big music companies, labels or agents behind them, but they are blowing up the internet with their music,” DeBardelaben said. “We’re very happy to bring them to Palm Springs to a new audience and continue that recognition.”
The mission statement of the Palm Springs Women’s Jazz and Blues Association says the organization “exists to preserve and foster an appreciation of jazz and blues music and support female jazz and blues musicians who traditionally struggle for recognition and employment.” To help create new lines of support and connection for these musicians, Blues at the Woodstock will include a Q&A with the artists on Saturday.
“When we go to music events, you see the artist onstage, and you never have any engagement or any interaction,” DeBardelaben said. “This year, we’re going to have a reception where the artists are going to be there to talk to our supporters and our team, and we’re going to have a Q&A on Saturday with the artists, because they have these wonderful stories to tell. I hear them, because I interact with them, but I think the audience will be just as interested to know more about these artists and to see how we can help them in their journey to continue to be independent and successful.”
DeBardelaben said her goal for Blues at the Woodstock is to spread awareness about the badass women in blues.
“I saw this survey online, and it asked for the famous blues musicians,” she said. “They came back with 27 responses. Only two were women, and those two women were Bonnie Raitt and Janis Joplin (who are both white). Where is Etta James? Where is Big Maybelle? Where is Koko Taylor? Those are blues artists who I grew up with, and they were just iconic and exceptional musicians, and their music should not be forgotten.
“I feel like there’s some urgency. They call it appropriation, but I think the music is being erased. You go to festivals—I don’t care if it’s a jazz festival or it is a blues festival—and only about 17% of the performers are women, and they’re normally singers. We’re doing our small part to make sure that these women get recognition. We are one of the handful of festivals around where we have all women musicians and performers.”
Blues at the Woodstock will take place on Friday, Sept. 4, and Saturday, Sept. 5, at Hotel Zoso, at 150 S. Indian Canyon Drive, in Palm Springs. Daily tickets start at $107.48. For tickets and more information, visit www.palmspringswomensjazzfestival.org.
