Boogie and Blues at Gator By the Bay 2025

Everyone has a bon temps at Gator by the Bay. Photo by Jon Naugle.

Now in its 22nd year, Gator by the Bay Festival, happening May 8-11 at San Diego’s Spanish Landing Park, is once again bringing together a phenomenal lineup of blues, honky tonk, zydeco, and Cajun music, with several other genres thrown in for good measure. The eclectic list of artists includes Blues Music Awards and GRAMMY nominees and winners, nationally known luminaries and hometown favorites. With sounds from the Mississippi Delta to the San Francisco hills, from the bayous of Louisiana to the barrios of Los Angeles, and from the beaches of San Diego to the clubs of Houston, the music of the artists appearing at Gator by the Bay will make you smile and make you swing.

Events.com will be presenting the festival for the first time this year, and therefore the roster of Blues performers is particularly outstanding. Headliners include multiple Blues Music Awards winner, GRAMMY nominee, and 2025 BMA nominee for B.B. King Entertainer of the Year Sugar Ray Rayford, 2024’s Blues Music Awards Best Emerging Artist D.K. Harrell, International Blues Challenge winner Selwyn Birchwood, and Blues Music Awards Guitarist of the year nominee Chris Cain. A full cadre of award-winning local blues artists, such as Whitney Shay and Michele Lundeen, will fill in the lineup as well.

Selwyn Birchwood

Nathan Williams Sr.

Ruben Moreno

On Sunday, May 11, Gator by the Bay attendees will be in for a special treat when three-time GRAMMY and Latin GRAMMY winners Ozomatli take the stage and share their own brand of Latin funk/rock/salsa/hip hop. In their 30-year career, the band has not only been known for their genre-hopping multicultural music, but for their social activism for Latino rights and immigration reform.

Gator by the Bay was originally founded to celebrate the joie de vivre in the music and culture of Louisiana’s Cajun and Creole country, with some New Orleans Mardi Gras spirit thrown in, and so the region’s Zydeco and Cajun music has always been a mainstay of the festival. This year is no exception, with such straight-from-Louisiana Cajun artists as Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys and the Revelers, while Creole Zydeco musicians Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas, Wayne Singleton & Same Ol’ 2 Step, and Houston’s Ruben Moreno & Zydeco Re-Evolution will fill the floor at the Festival Stage with dancing feet and happy faces.

In recent years, honky tonk, western swing, and rockabilly have proven to be extremely popular at Gator by the Bay, and this year’s festival kicks off on Thursday night with a dance party featuring James Intveldt & his Honky Tonk Palominos, Carl Sonny Leland’s Boogie Woogie Boys, Dave Stucky & the Hoot Owls, and The Gypsy Swing Cats. So, get those cowboy boots polished and practice your western swing dancing, and get ready for a yeehaw good time!

As anyone who’s ever been to Gator by the Bay knows, the festival is about so much more than just the music (which in and of itself is more than enough reason to attend!). Sure, it’s a delight to plop down on a hay bale or your folding chair, feel the sun on your face, smell the salty tang of San Diego Bay on the breeze, and lose yourself in the sounds of a blues harp, zydeco accordion, Cajun fiddle, honky tonk piano, or twangy rockabilly guitar. But, it’s even more fun to get out on the many wooden dance floors and let your feet and body take over. When you’re feeling peckish, well, there’s 10,000 lbs of fresh Louisiana crawfish waiting for you to pile on your plate and a whole food court of southern and local delicacies to sate your appetite, not to mention ice cold beer with which to wash it all down. Want to learn how to cook some of those goodies, or master the dance steps you see everyone doing? There are demos and lessons all included in your festival experience. Gator by the Bay is not just a music festival—it’s also a dance festival, a food festival, a seeing-old-friends-from-all-over-the-country festival, a having-the-best-time-ever festival. You definitely don’t want to miss it.