East Coast Blues & Roots (2009)

15 April 2009 by Max Easton

It started as a festival in Byron Bay usually does – with buckets of rain and several inches of mud. It ended with a walk out of the festival that in some places was almost knee deep with water. Yet, as a testament to the festival’s quality, Bluesfest recorded one of its most successful turn-outs of all time, with 85,000 punters determined to brave the weather and see some of the biggest names in music assemble for 5 days of Blues, Roots and everything in between. From artists forming in the 1930’s to today’s powerhouse acts, Bluesfest threw together a diverse line-up from a timeframe stretching almost 70 years long, sitting a few minutes out of Byron Bay at the infamously wet Belongil Fields.

Thursday afternoon reportedly began with an excruciatingly long line to get in, which was fortuitously missed by entering an hour late in time for the extremely charismatic, embodied rags-to-riches story, Seasick Steve. An absolute highlight and discovery of last year’s festival, the packed Crossroads tent demonstrated his rise in fame, drastically changing the mood of the set this time around. Playing all manner of instruments from perfectly able-bodied guitars to a Diddley Bow and his famous three-stringed incorrectly assembled electric that he calls ‘the biggest piece of shit in the universe,’ Seasick Steve played his grungy Blues to massive response.

In the same place a half hour in the future, the extravagant Blind Boys of Alabama enter to uproarious applause. Forming in 1939 and losing all bar one of their original members to retirement or more permanent means, their brand of Gospel is smile-inducing and charismatic. With one of the members occasionally falling asleep between songs and the charming Jimmy Carter suggesting that everyone buy their Grammy award winning album in the knowledge that we can afford it due to our stimulus packages. Jimmy Carter takes a stroll through the crowd followed by a minder acting as his eyes before finishing their set to near-encore inducing flattery.

More rain ensues over the following days, prompting either the jump down to barefoot festival going or the mass purchase of gumboots. Yet the throngs continue to pour into the festival, with attendances ramping up drastically for the last three days of the festival which coincide with a significantly more star-speckled line-up. The Friday night, however, isn’t without its highlights, with the extremely tight Zappa Plays Zappa following Black Keys front man Dan Auerbach and a speckling of top acts from bizarre out-of-time bluesman CW Stoneking to the absolutely beautiful Eric Bibb.

CW Stoneking is sadly drowned out by a tent chattering inanely over the top of him, leaving him drowned out despite his extremely interesting brand of blues from an era past, whilst Eric Bibb, returning to Australia after a two year hiatus, wows audiences with his sparkling personality and infectious Blues. He is no doubt one of Bluesfest’s highlights, both his sets sparking huge crowds and ear-to-ear grins as they are charmed by his songs of love, faith and hope.

Most interesting about Saturday though, is the headline act of the festival, Ben Harper’s latest incarnation, The Relentless 7. Ditching the Innocent Criminals and pursuing rock and roll, Harper draws a gigantic crowd that spews out the sides of the Mojo stage. A few songs in and a mass exodus is induced by what is little more than a generic rock band fronted by what seems to be an out-of-place frontman. In interviews with Ben Harper, he has gone so far as to call this band ‘the future of rock,’ a call which is so far beyond what was presented to Bluesfest audiences that it almost stings. Amongst a set of some good, solid originals, they also throw in an uninspired cover of David Bowie/Queen’s ‘Under Pressure’ and Led Zeppelin’s ‘Good Times Bad Times.’ They’re not a bad act, in fact they’re quite good, it’s just bamboozling as to why they’re together writing this brand of music that doesn’t seem to suit Ben Harper at all, leaving behind his old styles and songs in favour of a very generic  four-piece. However, it is only early stages, so I imagine the curiosity for many remains.

Sunday is one of the weekend’s finest days of music, with Australian guitar master Jeff Lang playing before US reggae-rockers State Radio on the Mojo stage with the evening capped off by Paul Kelly, American alt-country outfit the Drive By Truckers and legendary songstress, Lucinda Williams.

One of the more unknown acts of the early afternoon was the very, very strange Bob Log III. Wearing a one-piece cannonball suit and a bizarre full-face helmet attached to a distorted microphone off a snorkel, he’s a one man curiosity of hilarious proportions. Sitting behind a kick drum and a foot cymbal, his distorted, up-tempo blues is littered with antics such as procuring two young women from the audience to sit on both of his legs before singing ‘a love song called I Want Your Shit On My Leg.’ This is followed by the song ‘Boob Scotch’ in which he suggests that everyone turn to the person next to them and place their boob in their drink.

The line-up of the festival is so diverse that I can then leave Bob Log (potentially with a wet boob) to make it along to the soulful Ruthie Foster, with a voice that cuts like a knife. Sadly the expected Eric Bibb appearance doesn’t ensue, neither does Ruthie get up with Eric for his set directly afterwards at the same stage. It seems a mighty shame for this opportunity to go to waste and isn’t the only collaborative opportunity that goes missing for the weekend, with Ben Harper failing to appear with good friends the Blind Boys of Alabama.

The night is capped off by Lucinda Williams, a legend in her own right, backed by a band that knows her to a tee, playing songs from across her multi-decade long career. Well known as a touring partner of Neil Young, her voice is as faultless as his is today, with rock songs mirroring the man in pacing, writing and vocals. While her professionalism is marred by a music stand emblazoned with lyrics for her to read off, her performance is impeccable and seems to cause her enough delight to run around spanking her significantly younger band mates for the sets finale.

Monday presents the wettest of the Bluesfest days, with constant downpour beginning in the early hours of the morning and barely ceasing to the early hours of the following morning. In an extremely poorly-timed coincidence, the festival runs out of beer in the early hours of the afternoon, prompting shock and arguments from punters as they try to bargain their way into beer-priced spirits. The situation is managed poorly, the reaction being to close down ticket sales to prevent arguments. Of course, this just gets forwarded on to the bar staff who end up inundated with abuse and attempts to weasel cheap or free spirits out of staff. However, funnily enough, the festival continues.

The rain is stunningly forceful, driving so hard that any gap in wet weather gear results in a waterlogged underbelly. In fact, the Crossroads stage fails too, with rain bucketing through seams in the tent drenching the crowd and quickly causing massive puddles underfoot – this leads to a whole swathe of people collected for reggae-outfit the Easy Star All-Stars dancing wildly and carefree under the torrents of moisture. The Easy Star All-Stars are famous for their three album discography named ‘Radiodread,’ ‘The Dub Side of the Moon’ and ‘Sergeant Pepper and the Lonely Dub Band,’ resulting in a set of Radiohead, Pink Floyd and Beatles covers respectively. This combination is brilliant, with reggae-grooves stirring the masses into action whilst well known tracks from three of the world’s biggest and most renowned bands resulting in deafening sing-a-longs. After their muddy finish and some laughter between the audience brought about the common enemy (the rain,) crowds are split three ways, between reggae maestro Alpha Blondy, country-rockers the Drive By Truckers or headliner’s Relentless 7 (now maligned with poor word-of-mouth.)

The decision is to split into two, starting off at the Drive By Truckers playing a half-empty Jambalaya stage before trekking to Mojo to give Ben Harper another chance before returning for the end of the DBT’s. Most amusing of all is the DBT’s consumption of whiskey by the bottle on-stage. The subsequent return a half hour later to an empty bottle or two on stage is riotously funny as the band seem to have become ridiculously intoxicated in that short time period. The banter is more amusing and their swagger behind grinding guitar and country twang sets the scene for an extremely enjoyable end to the festival.

The walk back to camp is long and muddy, at times a struggle where the throngs need to wade through almost knee deep water. The crowd disperses, bears the rain and ends up back at their respective homes or camps to close out the 20th East Coast Blues & Roots Festival.

Bluesfest, as always, is a fantastic festival. The line-up featured within is the antithesis to high-attendance one-day festivals like V-Fest and Future Music, assembling the world’s finest talent, commercial-free across the four-day weekend. However, for its 20th anniversary, it fell a long, long way short of the line-up of years prior. Where was the Buddy Guy, John Fogherty, Ray Davies (The Kinks) or Eric Burdon (The Animals) of years prior? The line-up was sadly and drastically short of legends aside from Booker T Jones, who was confusingly advertised as appearing with the Drive By Truckers to no avail, his actual set obscured in the early afternoon of Monday. It was still a fantastic assemblage of music, but it just didn’t have the feel that the line-ups exuded from the standard Bluesfest set themselves. The only other criticism I can draw from the festival is its total lack of individual personality that festivals like Woodford and the Great Escape have in spades. The music is brilliant, but it feels like you could plonk the same line-up down at any venue in the world and feel little difference. It lacks the bizzarity of sideshows, roving performances and whacky installations that other festivals have made a part of their backbone and leaves the focus solely on the artists. Of course, this is probably why the line-up is so great all day long, but the true festival feel of choice seems sadly absent.

With all that aside though, there’s no doubt that Bluesfest will continue to be Australia’s most renowned music festival. It still gathers some of the finest music on any festival calendar and is brilliantly organised and timetabled to ensure that you’ll see everyone you paid to see. If you’ve never been, you are missing out on Australia’s finest event bar none. If you’ve made it along before, then you know exactly what you’re missing. All eyes are now on Peter Noble to see exactly what he can assemble for their 21st in 2010 and there’s no doubt that it will uphold to the very fine standards that the East Coast Blues & Roots festival has set for itself.

Album Reviews

Kimbra - Vows

Ben Salter - The Cat

Seasick Steve - You Can't Teach An Old Dog New Tricks

Timber Timbre - Creep On Creepin On

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