Cellular South Stage

2:20 p.m., Companyia Electrica Dharma: Representing this year’s Memphis in May honored country, Spain, Companyia Electrica Dharma is one of the most famous bands in the northeastern province of Catalonia. Brothers Esteve (guitar), Joan (saxophone) and Josep Fortuny (percussion) started the band in 1974 with the expressed purpose of making modern music that reflects the sensibilities of their Mediterranean homeland. The group has recorded 17 albums over the years, most infusing a jazzy style of world music with elements lifted from Catalonian folk music.

4:05 p.m., Eddie Floyd: Born in Montgomery, Ala., and raised in Detroit, Eddie Floyd will always be associated with Memphis soul thanks to the 1966 soul hit “Knock On Wood.” A decade earlier in Detroit, Floyd founded the Falcons, an early soul group that featured himself and lead singer Wilson Pickett. That group scored a hit in 1962 with “I Found A Love,” featuring music by an early version of the Ohio Players (also on today’s line-up). After the demise of the Falcons in 1963, Floyd landed in Memphis, where he became a staff songwriter for Stax Records, teaming with guitarist Steve Cropper to pen such hits as Pickett’s “634-5789 (Soulsville, USA).Floyd released To the Bone in 2002, and tours often with the Blues Brothers band.

5:45 p.m., Old Crow Medicine Show: They sound like they’re from the Smokey Mountains, but in truth this five-piece, old-timey string band formed in Ithaca, N.Y. The group was busking in front of a North Carolina pharmacy when they caught the ear of country-folk guitarist Doc Watson, who invited them to play Merlefest, his annual roots music assemblage held in Wilkesboro, N.C. The exposure lifted the band off the streets and onto the stage of Grand Ole Opry and on tours with Merle Haggard among others.

7:30 p.m., Kenny Wayne Shepherd: Shreveport, La., guitar slinger Kenny Wayne Shepherd, 29, has been a force in the blues world since releasing his debut album, Ledbetter Heights, in 1995. His latest project, a CD and DVD released in January called 10 Days Out: Blues From the Backroads, documents a 10-day pilgrimage Shepherd took to play with some of the blues elder statespeople. With Stevie Ray Vaughan’s rhythm section Double Trouble serving as house band, Shepherd visits artists both celebrated (B.B. King, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown) and obscure (93-year-old guitarist Etta Baker, Neil Pattman) and wisely sits back and lets the masters have the spotlight.

9:15 p.m., Bar-Kays: The Bar-Kays were the other great house band at Stax, after Booker T. & the MGs. The group scored with their very first single, the party anthem “Soul Finger,” in 1967, landing the coveted gig that year as Otis Redding’s backup band. A plane crash outside of Madison, Wis., on Dec. 10, 1967, claimed the lives of Redding and all but two of the Bar-Kays, trumpeter Ben Cauley, who somehow survived the crash, and bassist James Alexander, who had missed the flight. The pair reconstituted the band, reshaping it as a funk group. They played on Isaac Hayes’ landmark Hot Buttered Soul, and after the demise of Stax in 1975, found new life recording dance floor anthems like “Freakshow on the Dancefloor” and “Sex-o-Matic” for Mercury Records. Their latest, House Party, produced by Alexander’s son, top producer Jazze Pha, came out in February.

10: 50 p.m., Steely Dan: Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Steely Dan kick off their 2007 tour at this year’s Beale Street Music Festival. Co-founders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker met in the late ’60s while students at Bard College, and in 1972 formed Steely Dan. In the ’70s, the band released seven critically acclaimed studio albums, noted for their sophisticated songwriting, pristine production quality and expert musicianship. Steely Dan stopped touring in 1975, preferring to focus on studio work, and after 1980’s Gaucho, Fagen and Becker went on a 13-year hiatus. When they finally reunited in 1993 it was for a tour. Since then, the once road-shy duo have become road regulars and have recorded two new albums, including 2000’s Grammy-winning Two Against Nature.

Budweiser Stage

2:20 p.m., One Less Reason: In 1998 in Jackson, Tenn., guitarist/lead singer Cris Brown and bass player Jereme Hubble formed the band Lapdog. The pair soon settled on drummer Kevin Scott and lead guitar player Jeremy Jones to complete their line-up. In 2002, the band changed its name to One Less Reason and signed a deal with Universal Records, recording a four-song demo including “Favorite Color.” The deal with Universal did not work out, but the demo became the core of 2005’s Everydaylife, featuring a Metallica-like take on Prince’s “When Doves Cry.”

4 p.m., Hawthorne Heights: Dayton, Ohio’s Hawthorne Heights blends the bouncy, punk-inspired rhythms of emo with an aggressive vocal style that has led critics and fans to dub the new genre screamo. Vocalist/guitarist J.T. Fowler formed the band out of the ashes of his previous group, A Day In the Life. They hit early on with the song “Ohio Is For Lovers.” Last year’s If Only You Were Lonely, debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard charts.

5:40 p.m., Jack’s Mannequin:The band started in 2004 as a side project for songwriter/singer/pianist Andrew McMahon. On temporary hiatus from his regular gig in the punk-pop quintet Something Corporate, McMahon paid to record songs that morphed into Everything in Transit, a sprawling “concept album exploring his alienating return to the hometown he left to pursue his music.” Just before the album’s release in 2005, McMahon was diagnosed with acute lymphatic leukemia; following a transplant using bone marrow donated by his sister, McMahon recovered and started playing shows last year.

7:25 p.m., Taking Back Sunday: Pop-punk band Taking Back Sunday hails from Amityville township on Long Island, best known for the creepy events that inspired “The Amityville Horror.” It’s a fitting home base for this band’s dark and aggressive music. The 2004 Victory Records album Where You Want To Be debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, and the band had songs on the “Spider-Man 2″ and “Fantastic Four” soundtracks.

9:05 p.m., Wolfmother: Australian rockers Wolfmother formed in 2000, but the trio’s sound is straight from the 1970s, with trippy blues inspired by such seminal hard-rock acts as Black Sabbath. Last February, the band took home a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance. And last November they earned the ultimate metal seal of approval, playing Led Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown” for the legendary group’s induction into U.K.’s Music Hall of Fame.

10:50 p.m., Godsmack: One-time drummer Sully Erna stepped out from behind the kit in 1995 to front a new band with guitarist Tony Rambola, bassist Robbie Merrill and drummer Tommy Stewart. Taking their name from an Alice In Chains song, the band’s first studio effort, made for $2,600, was picked up by Universal Records and sold 3.5 million copies. Their fourth album, last year’s IV, was produced by Erna. The effort signifies maturation not just in the band’s sound, but also in Erna’s lyrics, which reflect the cleaned-up singer’s new-found spiritual side.

AutoZone Stage

2:15 p.m., The Duhks: The progressive folk group hails from Canada but its music pulls from all over the place — bluegrass from Appalachia, blues from the Mississippi Delta, French-Canadian folk from Nova Scotia, and percussion from Latin America. Their third album, Migrations, earned them a Grammy nod earlier this year. When the group plays the BSMF there will be one notable personnel change; lead singer Jessee Havey is on indefinite leave and has been replaced by Sarah Dugas.

3:45 p.m., Keller Williams: Virginian Keller Williams is a hi-tech descendant to such Memphis blues artists as Joe Hill Louis, a one-man band who provides his own percussive accompaniment by creating rhythm loops. In high school, Williams was inspired by guitar player Michael Hedges. Another influence was the Grateful Dead, whom he followed on tour for a while. In 1994, Williams released his debut album, Freek, which contained his best-known song “Freeker By the Speaker,” one of many compositions inspired by his days as a Deadhead. Williams, who is closely associated with such latter-day jam bands as his label bosses String Cheese Incident and Yonder Mountain String band, has released 10 more one-word-title albums.

5:30 p.m., John Butler Trio: Guitarist John Butler was born in California but raised in the remote town of Pinjarra in Western Australia. There he started learning guitar, and eventually was bequeathed his grandfather’s prized Dobro. In college in Perth, Butler busked on the streets and earned a residency in a local bar. With a regular gig, Butler put together the first version of the Trio, focusing his sound into a jammy, reggae-inflected pop stew reminiscent of Ben Harper or Jack Johnson. The band’s second full-length, Three, got attention stateside, landing gigs at Bonnaroo and South By Southwest. Sunrise Over Sea followed in 2004, and in March the trio released Grand National.

7:15 p.m., Taj Mahal: Born Henry St. Clair Fredericks in Springfield, Mass., Taj Mahal is the son of a jazz musician of Jamaican descent and a gospel-singing schoolteacher from South Carolina. He started playing music while an agriculture and animal husbandry student at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. After graduating in 1964, he formed the short-lived, proto-roots rock band Rising Sons with Ry Cooder. In the late ’60s he went solo and has tested his musical mettle on everything from Caribbean rhythms to children’s songs to Indian classical music, winning two Grammy Awards in the process.

8:55 p.m., Ohio Players: Among the best loved of ’70s funk bands, the Ohio Players started in Dayton, Ohio, in 1959 as the Ohio Untouchables and backed Detroit vocal group the Falcons (featuring Wilson Pickett and Eddie Floyd) on 1962’s “I Found A Love.” They recorded a string of classic funk records in the ’70s that were as notable for their sexy cover images as for songs like “Fire” and “Love Rollercoaster.” The group has suffered numerous personnel changes over the years; guitar player Leroy “Sugarfoot” Bonner, who joined in 1964, is the longest-serving current member.

10:35 p.m., George Thorogood: A former semi-pro baseball player, George Thorogood was inspired to switch careers by his musical heroes John Lee Hooker and Bo Diddley. He and his band the Destroyers scored modest late ’70s hits with such retro boogie workouts as his covers of John Lee Hooker’s “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” and the Hank Williams honky-tonk classic “Move It On Over.” His chart success reached its apex with 1982’s Bad to the Bone, the title track from which became an unlikely MTV hit thanks to a video starring Diddley. Thorogood released the studio effort The Hard Stuff last year.

TN Lottery Blues Tent

2 p.m., Daddy Mack Blues Band: Should anyone’s tour bus break down in Tom Lee Park this Saturday, they’ll be in luck. Blues guitarist “Daddy” Mack Orr is a mechanic by day. But at night he becomes one of Memphis’ premier bluesmen. A native of Como, Miss., Orr was 40 when he started playing out, eventually landing a gig with the celebrated Memphis blues band The Fieldstones. After that group’s demise 16 years ago, Orr put together his own band with fellow Fieldstones Harold Bonner on bass and James Bonner on guitar. The group’s second album, last year’s Slow Ride, got as high as No. 8 on the Living Blues chart and resulted in more high profile tours of U.S. festivals and Europe.

3:25 p.m., David “Honeyboy” Edwards: Nonagenarian guitarist David “Honeyboy” Edwards is one of the last living links to the roots of the Delta blues in the cotton fields of Mississippi. Born in Shaw, Miss., in 1915, Edwards found himself in the middle of the blues universe from a young age. As he wrote in his 2000 autobiography The World Don’t Owe Me Nothin’, he saw Tommy Johnson play when he was just 14 years old and immediately knew what he wanted to do with his life. Within a few years, Edwards was gigging with all the greats in the region. In 1938 he was playing a Mississippi juke with none other than Robert Johnson and Sonny Boy Williamson when the former reportedly took the fatal sip of strychnine-laced whiskey that killed him a few days later. Edwards toiled in obscurity longer than many of his contemporaries. Always a fine exemplar of the Delta style, he was recorded by blues archivist Alan Lomax in 1942, but it is only as he has emerged as one of the last of a generation, that his status has risen. The Memphis-based Blues Foundation included him among nominees for Best Acoustic Artist of the Year.

4:45 p.m., Alvin Youngblood Hart: Like his mentor Taj Mahal, Alvin Youngblood Hart started in the blues but has gone in wide-ranging directions since. Raised in San Francisco, he learned the blues on visits to his grandfather’s farm in Northwest Mississippi. In 1996 Hart released his debut disc, Big Mama’s Door, a traditional acoustic blues record that featured Taj Mahal on three cuts.

6:20 p.m., Ryan Shaw: Like his current tourmate Joss Stone, 26-year-old Decatur, Ga., native Ryan Shaw is deeply committed to the sound of classic soul. He began singing in church when he was 5, and dropped out of college to star in the gospel musical “A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Part II)” which led to an engagement in the New York production of Tyler Perry’s “I Know I’ve Been Changed.” Next he worked at New York’s Motown Cafe, where he sang hits by Marvin Gaye and the Temptations. When he joined the New York doo-wop tribute group the Fabulous Soul Shakers, he met guitarist Johnny Gale who teamed with percussionist Jimmy Bralower to produce Shaw’s recently released solo debut, This Is Ryan Shaw.

7:55 p.m., Kelley Hunt: a Kansas City, Mo.-born singer and piano player, Kelley Hunt’s sound is steeped in great old jazz and blues performers like Ruth Brown, Billie Holiday and Aretha Franklin. After becoming a Midwest club staple and recording two indie releases for 88 Records, Hunt made a trip to Nashville to audition for Garth Fundis (Keith Whitley, Alabama, Trisha Yearwood), one of the most respected producers in Music City. Fundis took Hunt under his wing, teaming her with song-writing partner Gary Nicholson, with whom he co-produced her 2004 album New Shade of Blue.

9:25 p.m., Walter Trout & The Radicals: After a lengthy career as a sideman for some of the blues’ biggest names, guitarist Walter Trout has emerged in recent years as a respected artist in his own right. Trout got his start in the Jersey bar band scene of the early ’70s before moving to Los Angeles where he backed such notable R&B superstars as Joe Tex and John Lee Hooker. Later he served stints in the legendary blues bands Canned Heat and the Bluesbreakers. In 1989 he went solo. His new album Full Circle features the singer/guitarist collaborating with a host of friends he has made over his 35-year career, including John Mayall, Jeff Healy and Coco Montoya.

11:10 p.m., Bobby “Blue” Bland: Originally from Rosemark, Tenn., Bland got his musical start in the late ’40s and early ’50s as a member of the Beale Streeters, a loose group that also included future stars B.B. King and Johnny Ace. After a stint in the Army, Bland returned to Memphis in 1955. His former bandmates’ successes had left Bland behind; famously, he worked for a time as King’s chauffeur. But Bland had a newfound maturity of voice. Recording for the Houston-based Duke label, he began an extraordinary run of R&B hits that included “It’s My Life Baby,” “I Pity the Fool” and “Farther Up the Road.” Bland recorded with diminishing return following Duke’s sale in 1973. He still tours regularly, with his last album of new material being 2003’s live set Blues at Midnight.

– Mark Jordan: markjordan@fusemail.com