Bluesfest in Review (2010)

14 April 2010 by Max Easton

Billing itself as Australia's Premier Blues & Roots Festival, Byron Bay's Bluesfest has been a staple of live entertainment for 21 years. Heading along for the festival's debut at a new site on its 21st anniversary, photos and words duo Leigh Plover and Max Easton were on ground to catch all the action.

There just aren't enough festivals in this country like Bluesfest. There's no shortage of festival line-ups featuring the latest flavour of the month acts in Australia, but there's only one place you can catch so many musical legends in the one place. Buddy Guy, Taj Mahal, Jeff Beck, Crowded House and Dr. John all on the same line-up...and that's before you even take into account masters of their craft like Bela Fleck and Lyle Lovett. Regardless, almost every year, Bluesfest churns out a line-up that is completely unrivalled, full of the acts lingering in the Blues Greats compilations selling for $10 at your local record store...and therein lies the magic.

2010's Bluesfest not only saw that phenomenal line-up from above, but saw a debut at a new festival site, moving from the problematic Belongil Fields (which even then, was a massive improvement on the comically-tiny-in-hindsight Red Devil Park) to the Tyagarah Tea Farm, a site that the Bluesfest organisers purchased a few years ago. The consequences of this? Massively increased camping areas, more expansive car parks and, ideally, the ability to cement the longevity of the festival with profits flooding into on-site improvements. And Tyagarah stood the test; the occasional downpours resulted in the unusual Byron festival sensation of good drainage; barely justifying the endless pre-festival gumboot purchases. Not only that, but the arrangement of the stages became significantly more sensible, with every stage a reasonable walking distance from each other guaranteeing you'd catch anything you had to run off to see. Of course, this resulted in some sound bleed from adjacent stages at the smaller tents, but you could push through the pain.

Each and every day brought with it a varied assortment of great acts. From The Avett Brothers' stunning introduction to Australian audiences to long-term Bluesfest favourite Buddy Guy, there was plenty to be heard in the Byron Shire over Easter. The fact that you could head along to see Matisyahu beatboxing immediately before the folk storytelling of Colin Hay is illustrative of the variety that festival director Peter Noble arranges each year. Unfortunately, that variety did also lead to The Fray headlining the Monday night to puzzling consequence, but there was always the funk tour de force of Charles Walker and The Dynamites just down the way as a great alternative. Whilst bands of the stature of Crowded House demonstrated their phenomenal songwriting abilities (resulting in ten thousand people belting out choruses to 7 or 8 different songs), new, unheard of local acts earned their keep in the same locale. Much talk surrounded the sets of Sydney gypsy outfit The Snowdroppers, whilst acts such as Jen Cloher & The Endless Sea, Chase the Sun and Carney also impressed. Add to that some great sets from this generation's local favourites Angus & Julia Stone and the Fumes (highlighted by a great live moment in which Steve Merry's guitar became unplugged, seamlessly thrusting the sombre track 'Sundancer' into a hand-clap and vocal effort) and you've coloured that line-up a rich colour of gold.

I could go on and on naming names, reviewing sets and describing the plethora of music that was there to be seen...but it would get lost in repetitive phrasing and make me sound like a raving lunatic. By now you should understand what Bluesfest is all about; primarily the music, and only the music. Which brings me to my only gripe about Bluesfest, and one which is  long-standing one. Somehow, across three different locations in the past few years, the festival still looks exactly the same. The same tents, the same ferris wheel and the same set-up across the board...and it's not like it's particularly well done either. Sure, the placement and usage of space has improved beyond sight, but the actual sights have barely improved at all. Walking around Bluesfest lacks the magic that a festival like Woodford, Splendour or the sadly deceased Great Escape bring to the fore. For lack of a friendlier description, it lacks a soul. Could the money spent on attracting just one John Mayall or Jools Holland pay for a designer to add some visual appeal to the school fete visual atmosphere? Probably, but then you wouldn't get that cool little flavour of status on the line-up. That's an argument best left for Peter Noble and his merry men.

Bluesfest now stands - and possibly always will - as the festival assembling the greatest line-up in this country. It's unrivalled. And anyone claiming that any festival featuring Bon Franz and the Arctic Mumfords rivals Bluesfest has a stone wedged firmly in the idiot zone of their cranium. The fact that a festival of this stature still has such room for improvement and is now at what may be - with the right council decisions - a permanent site, makes it a very exciting prospect for the future; a future which I very much look forward to blowing a thousand bucks on each and every Easter.

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