History of the Blues Café

The Blues Café was initially put together in the mid-90’s by Tom Schlief, one of the original and long-time organizers of the Big Bull Falls Blues Festival. Uncle “Daddy” Marcus Nickel was the emcee of the event, originally designed to raise funds for the Marathon County Historical Society.
The event ran for a couple of years and then disappeared. When the Great Northern Blues Society was formed in 1998, reviving the Blues Café was discussed as a way to raise money. It took a couple of years of planning to put on an event of its size, with the first “reincarnated” Café being held at Marathon Park’s Youth Building in 2000. (Now known as East Gate Hall.)
The event took place there until 2008, when it was moved to the Stoney Creek Inn. The Blues Café came full circle in 2010 and moved back where it started in 1993 – the historical Rothschild Pavilion.
If you, or anyone you know, has photos from the event at the Youth Building or Stoney Creek, we’d love it if you’d share them with us. Send us your prints to P.O. Box 2276 • Wausau WI 54402-2276 so we can scan and get them back to you quickly.
The history below is from the years the GNBS ran this event…2000 and beyond.

2026

Friday Night 
–
–
Saturday 
*Acoustic Sets – Alexander Craig
–
–
–