Sweet Lineup of Talent

Seemingly every city everywhere at some time or another tries to mandate fun with some sort of festival. Some of these events are predicated on the flimsiest of pretexts. The Walter Brennan In A Wetsuit Look A Like Contest And Rhubarb Festival isn’t with us yet. Just wait.

While you’re waiting, there’s the 10th Anniversary California Strawberry Festival in Oxnard. There’s a fantastic lineup of musical entertainment scheduled, and is it possible to eat too many strawberries?

This weekend, it’s the Prelude Concert Series, which means the strawberry festival is next weekend but there will be plenty of strawberry munchables on sale to keep the concert-goers satisfied despite all those red stains on their shirts.

The Saturday show, which begins at noon, seems to be stronger than the lineup of most other festivals--ever. The Grammy award-winning Los Lobos play East L. A. roots rock. Powerhouse blues belter Etta James is in the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame. Rosie Flores, long a staple of the L. A. scene, is a Texas-bred roots rock/country rock singer/guitarist with a couple of albums to her credit. Mitch Woods is a piano player who does that rockin’ boogie.

Once those rockers skedaddle, the pointy-shoe crowd will get its chance to warble a wahoo or two--country music is the order of the day Sunday. The Charlie Daniels Band, Shenandoah, Robert Earl Keen and Steve Hill will sing a lot of songs about trucks, whiskey and Ms. Wrong.

All this can be found at the Strawberry Meadows of College Park, 4000 S. Rose Ave., in Oxnard. Concert tickets are $20 per day. For more information, call 385-7578.