Blues Festival kicks off Thursday in Vinoy Park

A little more than 20 years have passed since fiery guitarist and singer Ana Popovic released her first album, Hush! Since then the Serbia-born musician has investigated, initiated and re-interpreted electric blues music in a decidedly unique and personal fashion.

She is a bad-ass player. Popovic was one of a handful of guitarists – and the only female – chosen to perform on the Experience Hendrix concert tour from 2014 to 2018. She was invited back for the 2022 edition.

Ana Popovic

Popovic and her six-member band will be in St. Pete Friday, on the first day of the three-day St. Petersburg Blues Festival. Popovic is touring in advance of Power, due out in May. She and bassist Buthel Burns wrote the new songs in 2020 and ’21, via Zoom because of the vise grip of Covid-19.

She also spent much of the period flying from her home in Los Angeles to a clinic in Amsterdam, where she received 14 chemotherapy treatments. Popovic did not – at least initially – tell her bandmates or her fans that she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer. She continued to play shows – wearing a wig and a hat – between chemo sessions.

“I knew I had to make it good,” Popovic told Cleveland Daily Scene about her new recording. “It’s an inspirational thing. I wanted to try my very best and play the songs I wanted to play and no other way. You really listen to your inner self. I think that’s the most important thing. You don’t do it for nobody else. I think some interesting music comes out in situations like that.

“It gave me a certain strength and a certain power to go through the whole thing. Many women go through it, and the bottom line is that you have to take the change that your body goes through and make the best out of it and reinvent yourself.”

In January, she released the first photo of herself with a new, short hairstyle. “I have a 20-year career,” she said, “and my fans are used to me looking a certain way.”

Some complained about the change from her signature long blonde tresses. “The amount of bullying online was amazing to me, and would just laugh at it,” she said. “Their thoughts about me wearing a hat were the least important thing happening in my life.”

“Recipe is Romance,” the second advance single from the Power album, is about a woman re-inventing herself,” Popovic said.

“It’s going to be a great year. Music is food for my soul, and an important part of my life. It’s amazing to finally tell the band the background story about what happened. They never suspected because we just kept going. It was very emotional.

“Hopefully, it is an inspiration for everybody, so that no matter what life throws at you, you make the best out of it and hold on tight to whatever your passion in life is.”

Other headliners at this weekend’s festival: Robert Cray, the six-string legend whose career caught on fire with the Grammy-winning 1986 album Strong Persuader; Tower of Power, the long-running R&B and funk band with a mighty horn section; the Fabulous Thunderbirds, singer, guitarist and harmonica player Kim Wilson’s sturdy Texas-based blues/rock band; Delta blues stalwart Tab Benoit; New Orleans’ Dirty Dozen Brass Band; Mississippi guitarist Castro “Mr. Sipp” Coleman, the winner of multiple blues awards, and his True Believers band; and guitarist/singer Tommy Castro, 2008’s Blues Music Awards Entertainer of the Year, and the 2022 BB King Entertainer of the Year.

Castro and his Painkillers band play the Vinoy Park mainstage Friday, and will also kick off proceedings with a pre-festival show Thursday night at the Palladium Theater (those tickets are here).

2023 Tampa Bay Blues Festival schedule:

Friday, April 14:

Colin James 12:30-2 p.m.

Larry McCray Band 2:30-4 p.m.

Ana Popovic 4:30-6 p.m.

Tommy Castro 6:30-8 p.m.

Robert Cray 8:30-10 p.m.

Saturday, April 15:

Dawn Tyler Watson 12:30-2 p.m.

Chris Cain 2:30-4 p.m.

Dirty Dozen Brass Band 4:30-6 p.m.

Tab Benoit 6:30-8 p.m.

Tower of Power 8:30-10 p.m.

Sunday, April 16:

JT Lauritsen & the Buckshot Hunters 1-2 p.m.

Jimmy Carpenter 2:30-4 p.m.

Vanessa Collier 4:30-6 p.m.

Mr. Sipp 6:30-8 p.m.

The Fabulous Thunderbirds 8:30-10 p.m.

Find all details and tickets here.