San Diego Blues Festival

When the AimLoan.com San Diego Blues Festival was founded in 2011, it had a simple mission to provide great blues music at an affordable price, and raise money to support the battle against hunger in our community.

Since then, the Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank has shared some of the best blues musicians on the planet with an appreciative and growing audience. In the festival’s first four years, our sponsors and our festival goers have helped contribute 12 tons of food and more than $585,000 to help the Food Bank fight hunger in San Diego County.

This year we are honored to present Mavis Staples as our headliner. A Grammy winner and member of the Blues and Rock And Roll halls of fame, Staples was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor in December, the nation’s highest arts honor. This year’s lineup also includes another Blues Hall of Famer, Joe Louis Walker and the popular, California Honeydrops. There will be a total of nine acts over the course of Saturday covering a broad spectrum of blues styles.

With the help of more than 28,000 volunteers the Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank feeds nearly 370,000 people per in month in San Diego County through direct food distributions to those in need and through a network of more than 350 nonprofit partners, including: food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, low-income daycare centers, senior centers, churches, schools and day centers for the elderly and disabled.

In San Diego County, 467,000 people live in poverty and face “food insecurity” which means that little or no food is available at home, and they often, do not know how they will get their next meal.  Nearly 30 percent of those living in poverty are children.

Last year, the Food Bank distributed more than 22 million pounds of food – the equivalent of 18.3 million meals – to neighborhoods and communities throughout San Diego County.