A musical stew

The Church Boys opened the City of Roses Music Festival on the Themis Street stage as an experiment.

Organizers booked The Church Boys, a local Christian hip-hop group, to get more variety into a festival that has gained a reputation for being a rowdy rock party.

The group had a strong, enthusiastic crowd and plenty of energy to go along with it. The experiment worked.

"I think people in the city of Cape are pretty open to new musical genres," said group member Trevon Alford. "And this festival seems like the place for different kinds of music."

Daryn Brooks, a festival organizer, loved the show.

"They were awesome," Brooks said. "And I usually don't like rap."

Diversity was one of the chief goals for this year's festival, with jazz, hip hop, rhythm and blues, folk and the traditional rock and metal acts coming together.

The mixing of styles was always evident at the gazebo stage. Every time one of the stage's acoustic acts stopped playing, the sounds of thrashing electric guitars could be heard from the Independence Street stage.

In Alford's words, this year's festival was a "cultural jambalaya" -- a jambalaya that festival chairman Don Ganim said 1,000 to 2,000 partook of on Friday and another 3,000 on Saturday.

Brooks and Ganim said families are a big target for the festival.

"Families won't come to see metal bands," Brooks said.

Jeff and Linda Hauser were lured in. They brought their 3-year-old son, Pete, with them from Ava, Ill., about an hour's drive north of Cape Girardeau, after hearing about the festival on the radio. It was their first trip to Cape Girardeau.

They sat on a curb and listened to Fusion Blue, with Jeff bobbing his head to the swampy, blues-infused Southern rock jams.

The crowd around them at the corner of Themis and Water streets was sparse, but that changed when the sun went down. At 7 p.m., the spot became filled with people who came to see the first Burrito-Ville Burrito Eating Contest.

Jeff Mungle of Jackson liked the variety in entertainment offered by the contest, but he was also there for the music.

"I just like to try to support local music," Mungle said.

Grady Davis and Richard Robertson of Poplar Bluff came to the City of Roses Music Festival mainly to see their favorite band, Cynderblok, take the Independence Street stage. But the festival was more than just one band for them.

"Everybody's cool," Davis said after rocking out to Cynderblok's cover of Metallica's "Enter Sandman." "All the bands are good."

Cynderblok was playing the festival for the first time, and its crowd could have been bigger and more energetic, but that didn't matter to the band.

They were happy to play their music in Cape Girardeau, at the City of Roses, said guitarist Chad Montague.

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182