The Heritage Music Blues Festival began in 2001 when Bruce Wheeler envisioned a blues music festival in a newly constructed waterfront park on the bank of the Ohio River in downtown Wheeling. The fact that Wheeling had no blues scene or even a blues club, band, or solo artist did not deter Wheeler from developing a festival. Promoted as “A Weekend of Award-Winning Blues,” the festival today gets raves from coast to coast. Wheeler’s festival features two stages, a main stage with Blues Music Award winners and up-and-coming IBC solo, duo, and band acts, and a second stage dedicated to local and regional artists from West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. The festival is run year-round solely by Bruce Wheeler and his family, so a family atmosphere spills over to the audience members, who have come from 25 states and four countries for the annual August event.
