Vanessa Collier Is Coming to Blow the Roof Off BluesFEST
The powerhouse saxophonist, vocalist and songwriter makes a rare Georgia appearance Oct. 24, closing out a full day of music, history and connection in Talbotton.
By Monica Jones
If Vanessa Collier isn’t already on your radar, October 24 would be a pretty good time to change that. She’s a powerhouse saxophonist, vocalist, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose music moves through blues, soul and funk, and she’s earned a reputation for doing all of it with one hell of a live show.
And tomorrow, thanks to Talbotton BluesFEST Artistic Director Jontavious Willis, we get her.
Collier will make her way to Talbotton to headline the sixth annual BluesFEST at Historic Zion Church, one of the festival’s biggest bookings to date. Opportunities to play Georgia and this part of the Southeast haven’t come her way often, and when Willis reached out this time and the date worked, she wanted to make it happen.
The more Collier talks about music, the less she talks about the stage itself. She talks about what happens between people: an artist and an audience, family, musicians who find something in one another’s work, even people sitting around a table sharing a meal. “I’m here to uplift,” she says. “That is what I’ve realized is sort of my purpose here on this earth.” For all the firepower she brings to a stage, that idea runs through just about everything else she has to say.
Finding Her Voice Without Words
Collier’s connection to the saxophone began in a wonderfully ordinary place: sitting in front of the television watching Two of a Kind, the late-’90s sitcom starring Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. In one episode, the girls’ father played a tenor saxophone, and the sound grabbed her. “Oh my gosh, what is this instrument?” she remembers thinking. “This is so cool.”
Music wasn’t entirely new to her. Collier had already tried piano, although that experiment ended after lessons with a teacher who would hit her hands while she played. She wanted to quit almost immediately, but her mother made her stick with it for about six months before finally giving in. So when Vanessa started asking for a saxophone, Mom understandably wasn’t rushing out to buy another instrument. Vanessa kept asking anyway, for six to eight months, until her mother finally gave her another shot.
She picked up the saxophone in fourth grade and spent the years that followed joining just about every band she could through high school and college. Then, in sixth-grade jazz band, she started improvising over the 12-bar blues and found something different. “It was just so freeing for me,” she says. “Finally, I don’t have to do this with words. I can just play.”
Years of playing have shortened the distance between what Collier hears in her head and what comes out of the horn. “I hear a melody in my head and it comes out,” she says. That instinct also shapes the way she writes. On her next record, songs have often started with chord progressions and a feeling before the story and lyrics arrive. Sometimes the melody never needs words at all. “Most things are a feel thing for me.”
That probably explains some of what keeps pulling her toward the blues. Her music reaches into soul and funk, and Collier is as comfortable talking about songwriting and singing as she is about the saxophone, but the blues gives her a particular kind of freedom. “Blues to me is like the direct connection to the soul,” she says. “You can’t play, you can’t write, you can’t sing that music without connection to your body, to your experience, to life.”
She describes it as a “gut punch,” but that’s not to say the blues has to live in misery. Collier loves the wit, playfulness and storytelling right alongside the heavier stuff. It can hurt, make you laugh and let you say what needs saying, sometimes all in the same song. “It’s such a great form of expression,” she says. “It’s just the complete package.”
What She Carries With Her
When I asked Collier which of her own songs she would give someone who wanted to understand who she is right now, she landed on “What Makes You Beautiful,” a song she wrote for her sisters in 2020. “I’m always family first,” she says.
The song grew from thinking about the women she loves and how easily women can question themselves and their own worth. “Being a woman in any industry at any time is rather difficult,” she says. “Being a young woman coming up is very challenging. I think you question yourself a lot as a woman.” For Collier, the song became a reminder that beauty and strength have to come from somewhere deeper than somebody else’s approval.
Her mother and sisters come up often when Collier talks about who she is and what she wants her music to do. Her mother, especially, taught her how to move through difficult stretches without allowing them to become the whole story. Mistakes can usually be fixed. Tomorrow comes. You try again. It’s a way of looking at life Collier now tries to pass along herself. “I just try and pass along that message that people are worth something,” she says. “Everybody brings something special to this world and has a unique purpose.”
Then there’s the actual show, because nobody is buying a ticket to hear a philosophy lecture. When I asked what happens live that a recording can’t quite capture, Collier laughed and gave me a very practical answer: “The saxophone solos are longer.” Audiences ask her how she can finish one of those extended solos and immediately turn around and sing. Collier says she couldn’t always do it either, but play 90-minute shows night after night, roughly 100 shows a year, and your body eventually figures out what you’re asking it to do.
By now, the long solos, vocals, original songs and sheer energy are all part of what she’s been building since sixth grade, when she first figured out she could say something without having to find the words.
How Talbotton Got Vanessa
For this one, we can thank Jontavious Willis. Collier and Willis first met while performing elsewhere, and the respect between the two musicians quickly grew into a friendship. They wanted to find a way to do a show together, and Willis had invited her to BluesFEST before, but schedules kept getting in the way.
“I love that guy,” Collier says. She’s watched Willis perform enough to know exactly what she admires about him: the songwriting, musicianship, the way he handles a stage and the intention behind what he does. “He’s fun, he’s witty, he’s got a message. He’s a very intentional person,” she says. “He is my people in that way.”
So when Willis came calling again and October 24 was actually open, Collier didn’t have to think very hard about it. “Yes, we’re free. Let’s make it happen,” she remembers. Then she adds something that says plenty about the trust between them: “He is just a light, I think, and anything that he touches is going to be great.”
For audiences around here, the timing couldn’t be much better. Collier doesn’t get many opportunities to perform in Georgia or the Southeast, and this one isn’t happening in Atlanta, at some sprawling music festival or inside a giant concert hall. It’s happening in Talbotton, on the grounds of Historic Zion Church and Straus-LeVert Memorial Hall, because two musicians wanted to work together and the calendar finally cooperated.
The setting matters to Collier, too. She and her partner have talked about how fortunate they’ve been to travel and perform for people from all kinds of places and backgrounds, and some of the smaller, working-class towns have stayed with her. Her own mother grew up with very little, and Collier recognizes something familiar in places where people appreciate what they have, look after one another and still make time to gather. She’s looking forward to the conversations, the meal, meeting people and seeing the place Willis has been telling her about. “The music is just the cherry on top that I get to play for people and try and connect,” she says.
When the Sun Goes Down
There’s plenty of reason to get to Talbotton long before Collier takes the stage. BluesFEST unfolds throughout the day around Historic Zion Church and Straus-LeVert Memorial Hall, with live music, workshops, dance, conversations and a chance to experience these historic spaces doing exactly what so many people have worked to preserve them for: being filled with people again.
The music carries through the day, but as afternoon gives way to evening, the whole feel of the place should start to change. Workshops wind down, the October light begins fading over Jackson Avenue and attention shifts toward the outdoor stage. Stephen Hull will help drive that final stretch of the night before Collier takes over to close the festival.
If you can spend the whole day in Talbotton, do it. Hear the music, wander the grounds, step inside the buildings, take a workshop and see what BluesFEST has grown into over six years. But if you can’t make the entire day, get there for the evening. This is a rare chance to see a performer of Collier’s caliber in a setting that puts you close enough to actually feel the show rather than watch it from three zip codes away.
Expect blues, soul and funk, original songs, big vocals and those famously long saxophone solos. Expect the energy to go way up once Collier gets hold of that stage. But when I asked what she hopes people carry home after the final note, she didn’t talk about the solos, the songs or whether anybody walks away impressed by how well she played. She talked about joy.
“I think there’s a lot going on in our world right now,” Collier says. “There’s a lot of tough things.” Her answer isn’t to pretend otherwise. It’s to remember the things that keep us moving through it. “There’s a reason to not give up. There’s a reason to believe that the world will get better, that we can build it together.”
Maybe that’s where everything else Collier told me eventually lands: the mother who taught her tomorrow was another chance, the sisters she wrote a song for, the sixth-grader who discovered she could express herself without words, the friendship that finally brings her to Talbotton and the people she’ll meet when she gets here. “Those little joys, those little moments together, I think, are enough to sustain us through the difficult times.”
And tomorrow, she’s bringing a saxophone.
TALBOTTON BLUESFEST
Saturday, Oct. 24, 2026 • Historic Zion Church + Straus-LeVert Memorial Hall • 27 Jackson Avenue, Talbotton, Georgia
A full day of live music, workshops, dance, history and culture, with Vanessa Collier closing the outdoor stage. Tickets and festival information at ZionChurchTalbotton.org. Tickets also available at GetLocalTix.com.