Hudson River Park celebrates 24 years of blues, BBQ

Brooklyn native Alexis P. Suter has been singing for as long as she can remember. These days, she is teamed up with fellow Brooklyn natives, The Bennett Brothers, to play the blues on tour.

The Alexis P. Suter Band is among the performers at this year’s Blues BBQ Festival at Hudson River Park. It’s billed as the longest running free blues festival in the region, dating back to 1999.

“It’s a great opportunity to come out and enjoy and spend the day, you can listen to some blues, you can grab some BBQ, new this year we have an instrument petting zoo for kids to learn about the instruments that make up blues. And we will have a blues dance floor this year, where we will teach you how to get your blues groove on,” Andrew Ronan, vice president of partnerships, programming and events at Hudson River Park, said.

On the BBQ side of things, among those cooking up a storm will be Jase Franklyn of Jase’s BBQ.

Franklyn uses techniques from both the south in the United States and his native Trinidad and Tobago to bring his tasty creations to BBQ lovers.

He says he will make plenty of food for the big day.

“Probably looking at maybe like 20 plus briskets, almost 50 racks of ribs, could be more,” said Franklyn, who is also a high school track and field coach at Poly Prep in Brooklyn.

For visitors, it’s a cool combo of food and the blues.

Plus, it’s a hometown show for Suter, Jimmy and Peter Bennett and their two bandmates.

Suter and the band say they don’t just do the blues, but they are good at it.

“We stem from a lot of different musical genres but the blues is where we are drawn to, you know Alexis’ gospel background, just that’s where we fit,” Bennett said.

Suter says even though they have fans all over, there is nothing like a New York crowd.

“It’s really nice to be in our city doing what we love. This is our playground, and we’re finally here again to do it together. Let’s do it,” Suter said.