The Southern Crossroads Music and Tamale Festival, brainchild of Pat LeBlanc, host of the syndicated radio show Southern Crossroads, is set for Aug. 10-12 at the Mississippi State Fairgrounds.

Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. praised the coming showcase of music, art and the tamale, and plans to get in on the act, too.

Johnson’s tamale experience goes back to his mother’s kitchen and her “tremendous tamale recipe that she passed on to me,” he said. “I’ve since passed it on to my wife,” he said, chuckling. He later clarified that they team up in the labor-intensive undertaking.

He promised to have an entry in a festival tamale challenge to drum up support and “I’ll challenge any other public elected official … anybody” to do the same. “Y’all come.”

Johnson said he’ll start early on his batch and hopes to have a variety – maybe turkey, pork and beef.

“We can always use a showcase for our many talents – whether it’s culinary, or whether it’s artistic or whether it’s musical,” he said of the festival.

“Remember, it may be nice today,” Johnson said on Tuesday’s 73-degree afternoon, “but it will be hot tamale in August.”

“It’s always been a goal of mine, doing the show, to do an outdoor festival,” said LeBlanc. He has mined the South for years on his radio show, which fuses select cuts of blues, classic R&B and some country with the culture, history and food of the Deep South.

“The show’s home is here in Jackson, so we came up with the tamale concept,” he said.

“You can just sense the excitement, with the CVB (Jackson Convention & Visitors Bureau) and other people throughout Jackson – I think there’s definitely a need for a festival we hope will grow and become bigger, equivalent to other events down South.”

“In the absence of events like Jubilee!JAM, there’s kind of a void for a big summer event,” CVB spokeswoman Marika Cackett said.

Food has always been an inspiration, LeBlanc said, noting his radio show’s “Cast Iron Skillet” segment, with a guest chef making a Southern dish.

The festival will celebrate the tamale and Southern cuisine in general. Several vendors and restaurants want to get involved and do something different, he said, so “We can definitely say the food at the event will be extremely unique.” Live cooking demonstrations are planned.

On the music end, organizers expect to announce headliners within the next two weeks. Musical artists already booked include singer/songwriters Steve Azar and Eric Lindell and jazz singer Hope Waits.

LeBlanc said offers are out to “some significant classic R&B entertainment on a legendary level.” National, regional and local musicians will be featured. Keep up with developments at the festival’s website, www.tamalefest. com.

Tickets will go on sale in May; daily general admission is $25 and a weekend pass is $48. It’s a commercial festival. LeBlanc looked at events in New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville and Baton Rouge to set the prices. Children 12 and under will get in free, he said.

The festival will present multiple musical genres – country and Americana on the Friday, blues and classic R&B on Saturday and a mix, jazz and maybe zydeco, to wind down on the Sunday of its August weekend.

The festival will offer an interactive art experience with festival-goers watching artists in action and participating themselves, said Amy Brunson, the festival’s director of art. “Every medium will be exhibited – painters, sculptors, wood carvers, documentary makers, photographers, authors, dancers and much more.” Attendees can judge art contests, join in mural and graffiti walls and more.

“Our goal is to delight all of the senses. … It is also our desire to be able to give up-and-coming artists of all types much needed exposure,” Brunson said. “This will be the perfect venue for that.”

Tamales will hit a variety of tastes, too. A recent trip to Vardaman and a meeting with the Sweet Potato Council introduced LeBlanc to a sweet potato pecan tamale. “I never thought about tamales outside of what I knew,” from growing up in Greenville and on Doe’s Eat Place tamales.

“Just researching the history of the tamale and how it’s linked to the Deep South, it’s fascinating to see all these different types of tamales that are out there,” he said, “from a lobster tamale to a sweet potato tamale.”

Hot tamales have long had a husk in the musical side of Mississippi culture, too, appearing in such blues songs as Robert Johnson’s They’re Red Hot (1936), Moses “Old Man Mose” Mason’s Molly Man (1928) and Lucille Hegamin’s Hot Tamale Molly (1925).

The spicy go-to roll is on a roll.

This past August, a Mississippi Blues Trail marker honoring Hot Tamales was unveiled at the White Front Cafe in Rosedale. “When people think about blues and going to various venues, a lot of these places throughout the Mississippi Delta, as well as the metro area, serve hot tamales,” said Alex Thomas, music trails program manager.

The Mississippi Hot Tamale Trail, a Southern Foodways Alliance documentary project, has collected about 25 oral history interviews and 40-plus places on its interactive map at www.tamaletrail.com. The project completed most its field work in 2005; the trail has since become a tool for culinary tourism in the Delta.

Mississippians in the Delta take the iconic food for granted, but for those outside the state, “it’s a total head-scratcher for them,” said oral historian Amy Evans Streeter. Because of that, it gets the most emails and inquiries, from The Times of London to a Seattle couple who found them online and traveled the trail.

For the coming Jackson festival, LeBlanc is already plotting for a longer-term outlook.

Next year, the aim is the first international tamale challenge, LeBlanc said, partnering with other tamale festivals across the country. There aren’t many, he said, but a 30-plus-year fiesta in Zwolle, La., draws tens of thousands to the small town annually, without a headline act.

“We’re hoping that they’ll host the Louisiana championship and we’ll bring the winner here to Jackson in 2013 to do the international challenge.”

“I love playing now as much as I did the first time I ever performed,” says the man known for such top country hits as “I Don’t Have to Be Me (‘Til Monday)” and “Waitin’ on Joe.” “At the end of the day, I want to make music. I love to write. I can’t wait to record. I still just love it, love it, love it. What is wrong with me? I’m addicted!”

During the past few years, Steve has been on a creative rampage. From his outpouring of songs has come his latest CD, Slide on Over Here. The come-on title refers both to the romance in some of the tunes and to the fact that the record is full of slide-guitar licks.

“Every note on this record is honest,” says Steve. “When you see us live now, we sound exactly like our records. As I did on my last record, Indianola, I played a lot of guitar on this album. And so much of it comes straight out of my personality.”

“Moo La Moo,” the collection’s rollicking first single, is a light-hearted look at money troubles. TV’s Gary Valentine, from King of Queens, co-stars in the song’s video. In it, he invented a “Moo La Moo” dance, which has recently become the subject of a second clip, a dance-instruction video.

“This album obviously has some serious stuff,” comments Steve. “But it also has a lighter, fun side. I didn’t put this single out because of the economy. I just thought it was time to show a more loosened-up, less-serious side of me.”

Slide on Over Here, does, indeed have its somber moments. “I’ll Find Me” is haunting, lost and lonely. “Apart at the Seams” is broken and shuddering. The piano ballad “Beautiful Regret” is wistful and aching. On the other hand, the groove-soaked “Sinkin’ or Swimmin’ (With You)” has wry, rapid-fire lyrics in its steady-pulsing tempo. The shuffling, softly sung bopper “Startin’ Today” offers hope amid sadness, and the airy, open, uplifting “Hard Road” finds reassurance despite tough times.

The album is the most emotionally complex one the artist has ever crafted. Steve yearns for his Mississippi homeland in the horn-punctuated “Sweet Delta Chains.” The gently loping “Let Go of the Rope” contains wise advice. The atmospheric “Take Your Time” is sung to a girl who’s in a hurry to become a woman. The sweetly melodic “Sunshine” is as pretty a love song as Steve has ever sung. “All I Need” is a power ballad that begs a lover for a second chance. “Back to Memphis” beckons with tenderness.

“This record was highly influenced by my 2006-2007 tour with Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band,” Steve adds. “Following our set, I would watch his show, just absorbing Bob and the band, and the feeling I got really helped define a true direction for this new album.”

Steve Azar is unusual among his peers in that he can entertain audiences as a solo performer with a guitar, in a small three-piece combo or with a full band. He is also distinctive in that he can enthrall a wide variety of audiences. During the past two years, he has opened shows not only for Bob Seger, but Carrie Underwood, Tim McGraw, Hootie & The Blowfish, Montgomery Gentry and a wide variety of other artists.

“I do the same show, that’s the weird thing. I can play for Brad Paisley’s crowd or Bob Seger’s. Even headlining at all those Delta blues festivals, I do the same songs, the same show. There’s no adaptation at all. I just seem to feel comfortable in any circumstance. It’s that Mississippi ‘thang.’ Whatever it is, we’ve got it. We fit in everywhere and I think that’s pretty cool.”

“Steve Azar rocked the house on our last tour,” raves Bob Seger. “He’s a great guy and a great performer.” Their tour together was ranked at No. 1 by the concert-industry publication Pollstar. A reviewer in the Columbus Dispatch wrote, “Azar has the inflections and rhythms of a young Bob Dylan, and he shifts deftly between acoustic and electric guitars. He passed the crucial test for an opening act: He held the attention of people who had never heard of him.”

If you don’t catch Steve Azar in concert this year, you might see him on television. He is co-starring on The Golf Channel’s series, Playing Lessons. The magazine Golf Digest ranks him as one the top-five golfing musicians, alongside his fellow country entertainers Rudy Gatlin, Marty Roe (Diamond Rio) and Vince Gill, plus saxophonist Kenny G.

“On Playing Lessons they team up a celebrity amateur, me, with a PGA professional. They put me with Kenny Perry, which after the way he played at the Rider Cup — that was fantastic. I didn’t know him before. But the thing about golf is that by the time you’re done playing 18 holes together, you know the person. The show was great to do. Golf is a sport with tournaments that allow people to spend money and help charities. That’s how I have come to meet so many great friends. It’s been a big help in my career.”

In the past, he has staged golf tournaments to benefit his Steve Azar St. Cecelia Foundation. The organization aids charitable organizations in the Mississippi Delta as well as Nashville. Its priority is Catholic organizations that help sick, disadvantaged or abused children. Steve’s four-day annual “Magnolia” celebrity event highlights the arts, music and food that define Delta blues culture. During any given year, Steve also conducts toy, clothing and food drives and puts on fund-raising shows for his Foundation.

The next-to-youngest in a family of five children, Steve Azar had music in him from an early age. Home was little Greenville, Mississippi, where his father owned the state’s first liquor store.Tutored by local blues musicians, Steve began writing songs when he was just 10 years old. That led him to develop as a guitarist. He had his first Nashville recording session when he was 14.

The teenager’s early tunes were strong enough for Buddy Killen and Donna Hilley of Tree Publishing to encourage him. One of the songs, “Livin’ Life to its Fullest,” was performed by its young composer on Danny Thomas’s national telethon for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. While still in high school, he made two more trips to Music Row. Azar was chomping at the bit to make music full time, but his parents insisted he go to college. Still, life at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi rapidly became one gig after another for the Steve Azar Band.

By the time he graduated with a business-management degree, he was playing 200 shows a year and touring with two 28-foot trucks and 10 men on the payroll. Azar was a regional headliner who played the Delta’s biggest clubs and festivals, including the 1984 World’s Fair in New Orleans. Mississippi native Faith Hill remembers being at his shows as a fan in the front row.

Steve Azar moved to Nashville in 1993. By the end of his second day in Music City, he was offered three song-publishing contracts. Getting a recording contract took longer. After signing with Mercury Records, Steve released what he considers to be his first “real” album, 2001’s Waitin’ on Joe. Its breakout single “I Don’t Have to Be Me (‘Til Monday)” has been played more than three million times on the radio to date. Azar made headlines again when Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman agreed to guest star in the chart-topping 2002 video for “Waitin’ on Joe.” Steve Azar worked so hard to promote his first hits that he developed vocal problems in 2003 and underwent surgery in 2004. In 2005, he again hit the popularity charts with his Mercury single “Doin’ It Right.”

In 2006, he formed his own independent label and hit the charts in 2006 with the rocking “You Don’t Know a Thing.” The song also appeared on his acclaimed 2008 CD Indianola. That collection took him back to his Mississippi roots and included “You’re My Life” as another Steve Azar radio single. The Indianola CD subsequently reached No. 1 on XM Radio’s “Country Outlaw” channel.

During the past year, Steve has reorganized his business, forming a new team, expanding his office staff, signing with Sanctuary Artist Management and created a new imprint for his music, Ride Records. Slide on Over Here and “Moo La Moo” are the company’s first products.

“There’s nothing that’s not completely honest on this record,” says Steve. “When you write, engineer, play all sorts of instruments and be involved in all aspects from beginning to end on a project like this, I believe you are baring it all. I think I’ve learned that you are always having a conversation with your audience. What do you want to say? What inflections will you use? Everything about that conversation has got to be downright honest. It really does.”

The 48-year-old singer/songwriter offers probing stories of real life, fueled by real emotion, glimpses of everyday events that, through his poetic examination, become profound. Hardin’s voice gets inside your bones. It’s a tuneful rasp with a hint of twang, like John Prine with more air and less dirt. His live performances of Nine Years Alone’s title track, an ode of regret and atonement to his young son, have been known to bring people in the crowd to tears.

Hardin’s commitment to his craft has paid off with awards and a devoted following from Florida to Michigan. While the past few years have seen Hardin on the move – living in Louisiana, Texas, Ohio, Maine, Mississippi, Florida and now Michigan – and playing less frequently, the songs keep coming, songs that are both personal and universal. His playlist doesn’t contain cover tunes. It’s all original. During a three-hour performance, he won’t play the same song twice, and even his biggest fans are likely to hear something new because there’s always a new song.

And just when you think he can’t get any better, he does.

Walt has made top shelf recordings that are direct evidence of the emotional depth of the man and the harmonious skills of the artist and his fellow muse compadres – Bull Creek Souvenir (1994, out of print), Fire, Honey & Angels (2000), Rivertown (2002), Mustang Island (2004), Hopewell (2006). He cut Diamonds in the Sun with his Tejas soul brothers, the Mystiqueros, in early 2007, after about eight or nine months of initial seasoning and finding their tongues, treads and grooves. The release of Diamonds in the Sun was followed with critical acclaim, many best of the year pick lists and considerable airplay on XM and Texas radio.

Walt completed his 7th record called Vigil in 2009 and it is a beautiful, honest and graceful kaleidoscope of the life cycle. Vigil documents the ranging and interconnected thoughts of the author, who expresses concerns for his child, throws questioning fireballs at God, honors those close friends that fade too soon by carrying on, wonders what will happen to his life’s works when he passes, bathes in healing waters prior to his final judgment and mostly exercises a grateful heart and an agile mind.

Walt has produced and cultivated creative records by a variety of artists including Brandon Rhyder, Jamie Richards, Jason Eady, Ryan James, Josh Grider, Bonnie Bishop, Autumn Boukadakis, Sam Baker, Monty Russell, Brian Langlinais, Bobby Duncan, Brad Hines and his lovely wife, Tina Mitchell Wilkins. Tina is a senorita muy bonita with a velvet sky voice, who used to dance with me back before I started squirting on shots of Shine(r)-ola, sometimes called the Musk of the Mid-South or the Lube of da Boobs.

Occasionally, Walt needs a trim but more often some deep rest and another Lone Star or Shiner or Jameson to help lube that night’s delivery of trials and truths. His bark has been peeled and trunk bared by wind and rot – yet the deep roots underground have sustained the peach buds amid southern droughts and released the wondering muse with earthbound doubts.

The Mystiqueros released their second record, Agave, in April 2010. Agave bookmarks a ripening and simmering of the MQ roux and a well-rounded distribution of the burdens shared. There’s been four years of Mystiquero maturation and fermentation, amongst the May Jams and Thursday evenings with joyful faces polishing the receptive benches and dance floors at Gruene. Plus celebrations of country and collective spirits under the live oak clusters along South Grape Creek with Lone Star Lights from the Luckenbach well and the West Texas comforts at the Gage Hotel.

Walt has churned multi-miles beneath his wheels and gathered up the ragged thoughts and discarded pearls that help him to render the distinctive images and characters that follow. Many nights he needs more listeners in the seats to hear the wit and layers of his reflective art. Those live muse listeners get the benefit of him strumming the rhythms and painting the prose of where he’s rambled and who and what he’s observed amongst his meanderings. His songwriting is southern roots and road-worn gospel and the deep creases and genuine smile help to authenticate the honesty of his witnessing.

Whether performing solo, as a duo with his wife, Tina, or amped up with his brethren, the Mystiqueros, Walt entertains those of us with Bocks and Buds and Vino in hand and helps us lay our burdens down. So come out to hear a good friend enjoy himself and please us with his vivid fictions and post card realities.