THE Stanley Blues Festival, whose future had appeared to be in doubt, has announced this year's line-up.

The 12th festival will be held on Saturday, August 7, from noon until 6.30pm, on the King's Head Field.

The free event will feature six acts, including Stan Webb's Chicken Shack, who played at the festival in 1994 and were part of the British blues boom of the Sixties and Seventies.

Earlier this year it looked as if the festival, organised by Consett-based Northern Recording, could be in jeopardy because its main funding, from Derwentside Council, was in doubt due to planned spending cuts.

Northern Recording would have had to seek alternative funding to keep the event going but the authority has agreed to support it.

The festival has grown from a small event, attracting a few hundred fans, into one of the major dates of the North-East musical calendar.

Fans travel from all over the region and a growing number of blues fans travel from other parts of the country, giving a boost to the local economy.

Sherman Robertson, a master of zydeco, hard-swinging Texas electric blues and the lazy swamp sound of his native Louisiana, will also be one of the top bill acts. He has worked with many of the great bluesmen and played guitar on Paul Simon's Graceland album.

The festival will also feature Nashville soul man Charles Walker with Mo'Indigo and the Horn Section, one of Britain's hardest working blues/rock band The Hamsters, the Chicago blues of recently re-formed North-East legends The Blues Burglars and Sunderland's George Shovlin Band.

The show will, as always, be compered by comedian and former Century Radio phone-in host Mike 'The Mouth' Elliot.

Paul Green, of Northern Recording, said: "The festival has become a date that the biggest names in Britain and the States want to play, which is why we are able to attract acts of the pedigree of Sherman Robertson.

"Personally, I am really looking forward to seeing Stan Webb. It isn't very often that we invite a band to play a second time at the festival, but Stan was awesome last time around and we are very pleased to get him back."