The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

Summer’s Broad Street Bash closes with the blues

Taste of Cincinnati expected  to draw 500,000 people
5:37 p.m.
Local ingredients key for bartender
5/16/12
How well do you know Kings Island?
5/13/12
Time cover shows mom breastfeeding 3-year-old
5/11/12
Lebanon Theatre Company presents ‘Angel Street’
5/11/12
> More headlines

11:49 PM Thursday, August 18, 2011

By Andy Sedlak

Staff Writer

MIDDLETOWN — The exhausted cliche states all good rides come to an end.

The Broad Street Bash train is pulling into the station.

The last Bash of the season will be at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday. Gregg Clark and Darrell Sallee — a pair of local guitar legends — along with the Swamp Bees, a local blues-based group, will conclude the summer’s festivities.

Tim Lewis, a Bash organizer, said he’ll remember this summer as the year the Bash’s identity came into focus.

“The biggest thing I came to realize — and maybe I’m slow — is that it’s a social event,” he said. “That really just knocked me in the head last week. It’s not a certain age group or people of a certain socioeconomic status.

“It’s a gathering of blue collar and white collar, all ages, races — you name it,” Lewis said.

Wednesday’s musicians have been crossing paths for years. For example, artist Gregg Clark used to play the local Upstage Lounge with Sallee in the 1970s. He later played with Fred Gillespie in the Gregg Clark Band.

“I’m real happy to be part of the last show,” he said. “We’re planning to do a solid opening set — some acoustic blues, classic rock. We’ll hit on everything from John Lee Hooker to the Stones and all points in between.”

The four-member Swamp Bees should take over a little after 7 p.m. The group was originally booked for the very first Bash of the season on May 18 but were rained out.

Lewis promises a “bigger, better” Bash next year.

How to go

What: Broad Street Bash with Gregg Clark, Darrell Sallee and the Swamp Bees

When: 5:30 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Governor’s Square Park, Central Avenue and Broad Street, Middletown

Share this article