Jane Goodridge shares her birthday with Magic City Blues. The family likes to joke that the festival is her sibling.
“I’ve always shared everything with Magic City Blues,” she said. “Now, I look at it, and I think it’s the best thing ever. When I was younger I didn’t appreciate what it was.”
Entering its 20th year (albeit the 19th was canceled by COVID-19), festival organizers are moving ahead with an anniversary bash. Ticket sales are not being limited, and 2,500 to 3,000 people are expected each night. Hand sanitizer will be available on site, and masks will be available at the gate for those who wish to wear them.
Jane, 20, and her brothers Will, 22, and Henry, 25, are part of a team of family and volunteers who pull off the monumental two-day festival, which shuts down Montana Avenue between North 25th and North 23rd Streets annually.
In the early years, the Goodridge kids were sent off to their grandparents' house for a week each year when the festival rolled around.
“All it was in our minds was a fenced-off gate we could not see into,” said Will. As they grew older, the mystery wore off, and they were introduced to the world their parents had crafted, though they weren’t allowed to work the festival until they turned 14.
“The kids will look back at our lineups when they were tiny, and they go ‘What?! You had them?!!!’” said Pam Goodridge, who founded the festival with her husband Tim in 2000.
“The Lumineers!” said Will of the 2011 festival. “We didn’t care back then. We were eating snow cones and running around.” At that time, Magic City Blues was a three-day event, shutting down Montana Avenue Friday and Saturday and moving to South Park on Sunday.
One of Jane’s fondest memories is being invited on stage to dance with Michael Franti when she was 10.
“His backup singer came and said, ‘Do you want to come on stage and dance with Michael?’ And I got up there and didn’t realize there were 3,000 people staring at me.”
“All my memories from Blues were just sweating my buns off,” Will laughed. He recalls hiding out in the Billings Depot with his sister Jane, resting on the cool terrazzo floors and subway tile walls.
Magic City Blues just might be the only festival in the U.S. with its backstage in a refurbished railroad depot building.
“The bands love our backstage,” said Pam. “It’s so calm and wonderful.” That partnership was struck during the first Blues Fest, which coincided with the reopening of the Depot after extensive renovations. Built in 1909, the building closed in 1979 with the end of train service to that station.
Tim, who booked live music events when he was a college student at Rocky Mountain College in the 1980s, said one afternoon he was sitting on the patio of the old Beanery, which is now Bar MT and overlooks Montana Avenue. The light turned red down the street at North 27th Street, and Tim caught an idea.
“When the street is empty of cars on Montana Avenue, it has a whole different perspective,” he said. “A light bulb went off. Let’s do something here. Everything just cascaded from there.”
In 2019, Tim became the assistant general manager at MetraPark, and he passed the organizer torch to his wife. Pam has taken center stage in booking bands and organizing the event with the support of her children.
For the Goodridge kids, entering their freshman year became a family rite of passage. That summer, they can officially join the staff of MCB.
“She’s been blasting music from her computer for as long as I can remember,” Will said. “I think I just soaked it in and didn’t consciously realize it until a few years ago.”
Will wanted to be a zookeeper, but he’s embraced his musical side, and in addition to helping organize and run Blues Fest, he opens the festival’s kick-off event on Thursday during Alive After 5 as Willy G. Blues artist Mike Farris headlines.
“It’s so fun working at the merch booth and people watching and things that happen and the wacky problems you have to solve,” said Will. “Every year you pick up a new skill or strategy.”
They now keep tarps at the ready in the merch booth after the torrential downpour during Ziggy Marley’s set in 2016.
“We were literally up to our ankles in water,” said Will, “and people were pushing the tables back to get under them. It was crazy.”
“Ziggy wanted to wait it out and he wanted to perform,” Pam added, “so we stayed on later. I think we went past curfew … Never once did he say, ‘I’m leaving.’ ”
This year, the festival will run right up to the midnight curfew, though with a twist. The headlining acts of the evening (Keb’ Mo’ on Friday and G. Love and the Juice on Saturday) will go on at 8:30 p.m., and the up-and-coming acts (Larkin Poe on Friday and Samantha Fish on Saturday) will take the stage at 10:30 p.m.
This is in part to please audiences who have also grown older with the festival. “We were asked if we could start the main acts earlier,” said Pam. “So, now people can leave by 10:30, 11 p.m., and up-and-coming bands, we are letting them rock out at the end of the night from 10:30 to midnight, so the diehards can stay till the end.”
Henry, the oldest sibling, started working the festival in 2012. Now 25, he lives in Rhode Island and returns each year to work the festival.
“We just grew up with my dad always on the phone talking to people about tickets,” Henry recalled. “Once a year, we’d go to our grandparents for a week, and when we got home, dad and mom would look like zombies.”
Once Henry began working the festival, he quickly understood that kind of exhaustion. “The thing that always sticks out to me is Saturday night at 3 a.m. It’s just me and my dad — the last couple people on site — just kind of wandering around, hopped up on caffeine to make it through the day. Four thousand people were there just a few hours before.”
Jane, the youngest, recalls fondly coming together at the end of each night. “We are all so dead and end up congregating at the house. We are not all together at the event, so at the end of the night we all have our stories to swap.”
Of continuing the festival, Henry said the family takes it year by year, and each family member has had a hand in carrying it forward.
“There is always just a list of responsibilities and we slot in people’s names wherever we can. You never know, you could end up having the job of setting up all the scanners and tech for the gates, and then an hour later you’re duct taping down an extension cord across Montana Avenue.”
Yet, like clockwork, the festival rolls around and everyone comes together. “It has gotten to a point where we don’t hear from people all year, and then they start streaming through the gates,” said Henry.
The festival has long relied on volunteerism to ensure things operate smoothly, and many family members help out, as well as volunteers who become like family, Pam said.
“It’s kind of like our Christmas. Our whole family gets together for Blues Fest, and not so much for the holidays.”
Retrospective: Magic City Blues
2002 - Setting the stage
2002 - Eddie Shaw & The Wolf Gang
2003 - Donald Ray Johnson
2003 - John Mooney
2003 - Maurice John Vaughn
2003 - Nick Curran & The Nitelifes
2004 - The sun sets on the crowd
2004 - Hamilton Loomis
2005 - Tyler Burnett Band
2005 - Sweet Betty
2005 - C.J. Chenier & The Red Hot Louisiana Band
2005 - Buddy Guy
2006 - A wet intermission
2006 - Robert Belfour
2006 - Hillstomp
2006 - The Black Crowes
2007 - Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band
2007 - Dwayne Dopsie & The Zydeco Hellraisers
2007 - Hello Dave
2007 - Blues Traveler
2008 - A little rain
2008 - Mighty Lester
2008 - Delbert McClinton
2008 - JJ Grey & Mofro
2008 - Albert Cummings
2009 - Shannon Curfman
2009 - Lil' Ed & The Blues Imperials
2009 - The Tommy Castro Band
2009 - Little Feat
2010 - Sons of Billings
2010 - Sonny Landreth
2010 - Michael Franti & Spearhead
2010 - The Derek Trucks & Susan Tedeschi Band
2011 - Janiva Magness
2011 - Anders Osborn
2011 - George Thorogood & The Destroyers
2011 - Chicago Mass Choir
2012 - Little Freddie King
2012 - Kasey Anderson & the Honkies
2012 - Counting Crows
2012 - Chris Isaak
2013 - Maxie Ford
2013 - Vintage Trouble
2013 - Robert Cray Band
2013 - Steve Miller Band
2014 - Jonny Lang
2014 - Ben Harper and Charlie Musslewhite
2014 - Trombone Shorty
2014 - Huey Lewis and the News
2014 - Gary Small and the Coyote Brothers
2015 - Buddy Guy
2015 - The Congress
2015 - The Steepwater Band
2015 - John Fogerty
2015 - O.A.R.
2015 - Los Lobos
2015 - Lucinda Williams
2016 - Elle King
2016 - Kenny Wayne Shepherd
2016 - Karen Lovely
2016 - Guthrie Brown & The Family
2016 - Ziggy Marley
2016 - Rain at Magic City Blues
2016 - Jared Stewart
2017 - Brian Setzer
2017 - Victor Wainwright & the Wildroots
2017 - G'Jai's Jook Joint
2017 - The Dusty Pockets and Crowd
2017 - ZZ Ward
2018 - ZZ Top
2018 - Carolyn Wonderland
2018 - Magic City Blues rain
2018 - Laney Lou and the Bird Dogs
2018 - Phillip Phillips
2018 - AJR
2019 - Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band
2019 - George Thorogood and the Destroyers
2019 - Hawthorne Roots
2019 - Little Hurricane
2019 - Postmodern Jukebox
If you go
Tickets for Magic City Blues start at $59. The festival officially kicks off on Thursday night with a free concert on Montana Avenue at the Stillwater Stage adjacent to McCormick Café.
The Goodridge family, pictured in 2019 in front of the crowd at Magic City Blues, from left are Jane, Tim, Pam, Henry, and Will. Pam and Tim founded the festival two decades ago, the same year their daughter Jane was born. The Goodridge children have grown up with the festival and now help organize the annual event.
Jane Goodridge, seen at the center, dances onstage during a performance by Michael Franti & Spearhead, who headlined the 2011 Magic City Blues music festival in downtown Billings. Goodridge's parents have organized and put on the festival for 20 years.
The Goodridge family, pictured in 2019 in front of the crowd at Magic City Blues, from left are Jane, Tim, Pam, Henry, and Will. Pam and Tim founded the festival two decades ago, the same year their daughter Jane was born. The Goodridge children have grown up with the festival and now help organize the annual event.
Jane and Will Goodridge (center) are seen in 2014 with their cousins Jace and Sela, who come in from Salt Lake each year to help with Magic City Blues music festival.