This year's festival will host 68 bands on 9 different stages with genres of music including oldies, gospel, zydeco, blues, classical, jazz, alternative, rock, pop, country, and funk.  Also included will be a hands-on children's art stage where art teachers will show students how to do different artistic techniques.  Festival attendees will have the ability to stroll from stage to stage to hear this regions most popular groups.  On the way, they will have the sensation of viewing art created by this areas newest and favorite artists.   Set amongst a backdrop of the existing treasures in the numerous antique shops, this year's festival will again offer something for everyone to enjoy.

Featured this year will be the dedication of two new visual arts projects in Downtown Ponchatoula.  Mike Fulmer of Berryland Motors is erecting a brick wall that will be painted by PHS art students which will become a mural that will be unveiled at the festival.  At 9:30 AM., "Jam" Chair Dr. Ted Hudspeth and Public Arts Commission Chair Kim Zabbia will pull the wraps from a 72' x 8' mural entitled "Ponchatoula Celebrates the Arts." The mural, funded by Mike Fulmer and Berryland Motors, will be located at the east end of the car lot on a 14' wall built specifically for this purpose. The work was designed by Robert Dyer and Sarah Burleson, advanced art students at Ponchatoula High School, and painted by "Zab's Kidz," a group of PHS art students whose mission is to enhance the city through visual art. Zabbia is also the art instructor at PHS.  During this ceremony, Mrs. Irma Thomas, The Soul Queen of New Orleans who was born in Ponchatoula, will be presented the second annual Lifetime Achievement Award from the Northshore Regional Endowment For The Arts.  She will also be inducted into Ponchatoula's newest attraction, The Northshore Museum Of Music & Arts Hall of Fame, and will donate historically significant items from her life in music to the museum.

At 10:00 AM, the bands on all of the stages will begin playing.  At 11 AM, the Ponchatoula Public Arts Commission will unveil its second outdoor sculpture funded by contributions from local supporters of the arts and from a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts. The life-size bronze, entitled "The Horticulture Lesson," honors Ponchatoula's strawberry farming families. It depicts a farmer sitting on the tailgate of his produce truck teaching his daughter the parts of the berry; his son standing at his side. The sculpture, which will be located near the railroad tracks facing East Pine Street, will be installed by the artist, Bill Binnings of Meraux, Louisiana. The work will be dedicated in the memory of the late Homer Chaney, a 1968 graduate of Ponchatoula High School.