Grugelfest Returns in 2019, Better than Ever!

GRUGELFEST 2019 will be held Friday-Sunday, September 20-22 at the Radisson Hotel at The University of Toledo, 3100 Glendale Avenue in Toledo.  Special GRUGELFEST room rates apply, and reservations are already being accepted. The lineup this year is the best ever. YERBA BUENA STOMPERS (from New Orleans to San Francisco . . . ), CLIMAX JAZZ BAND (from Toronto, Ontario, Canada), Roy Rubenstein's CHICAGO HOT SIX (Chicago, Illinois), Dave Greer's CLASSIC JAZZ STOMPERS (Dayton, Ohio), and the CAKEWALKIN' JASS BAND (Toledo, Ohio). A History of Grugelfest The basic story is that the EARLYJAS Club of Northeast Ohio ran an outstanding Fall Dixieland Festival in Strongsville, Ohio for 25 years or so (and for a few years before that in Kent, Ohio).  But at their monthly meeting after the 2011 festival, the club announced that they didn't have enough volunteers to produce the event and that the festival would be discontinued. Now it just so happened that Toledo's Cakewalkin' Jass Band was the featured entertainment at that meeting, which was held at the British-American Club in Twinsburg, Ohio.  (Of course, I play piano in that group.)  The British-American Club has Bass Ale on tap, and the band had consumed our share of it by the time the business meeting took place when the announcement was made.  So the question, "Why don't you just move the festival to Toledo" made perf