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Bix jazz festival to move to Modern Woodmen Park

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By David Burke | Wednesday, July 09, 2008 |

The Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival will step up to the plate at Modern Woodmen Park in Davenport from July 24 to July 27.

The move, which will officially be announced this morning, was confirmed Wednesday by Bix Memorial Society president Ray Voss.

The 37th annual festival, much of which traditionally takes place in Davenport’s LeClaire Park, had to be moved because of residual damage from Mississippi River flooding last month.

“The ground’s just too wet,” Voss said of the riverfront park.

What had been at the band shell stage at LeClaire Park will be on a temporary stage on the baseball field at the former John O’Donnell Stadium.

Voss said Kirk Goodman, general manager of the Quad-Cities River Bandits baseball team, was extremely helpful in terms of accommodating the festival.

“They seemed to have a whole different attitude than the old owners did, and they were anxious to work with other organizations and have other things going on in there besides baseball games,” Voss said. “They worked out a good deal for us.”

A stage will be set up on the field, and fans will sit in the stands, which has seating for 5,500 people. There will be no seating on the field, Voss said.

The Bix is the third Quad-City summer festival requiring a move to a new location because of the 2008 floods. Sturgis on the River was forced to switch last month to the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds in Davenport, and the venue for the past weekend’s IH Mississippi Valley Blues Festival was changed to 2nd Street, the RiverCenter and the Adler Theatre, all in downtown Davenport.

Voss said none of those options would work for the Bix Jazz Fest since the fairgrounds will be readying for the Mississippi Valley Fair that weekend and 2nd Street is already the location for the Wells Fargo Street Fest the same weekend.

When major flooding hit the Quad-Cities during the summer of 1993, the jazz festival was moved to Museum Hill, the home of the Putnam Museum and the former Davenport Museum of Art.

“That was a disaster up there,” Voss said.

The festival’s other locations — the Col Ballroom, Danceland and the Clarion Hotel, all in Davenport — will remain the same, he said. The traditional Afterglow concert will be at the Capitol Theatre, also in downtown Davenport, on Sunday, July 27.

David Burke can be contacted at (563) 383-2400 or dburke@qctimes.com.

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