Live Review - Bluesfest 2012

5-8 April, 2012 – Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm, Byron Bay (NSW)

Right, I’m going to try and make this brief.  I’ve got four days worth of live music to write about and I don’t want to go on and on like I usually do and write a novel for every single day that I was there.  While I’d love to bang on about everyone that I saw at the festival, you’d probably get very bored reading it.  So how, exactly, am I going to write this one up?  Well, I don’t know, I’m just going to write and see where it goes.

To begin with, I must say that Bluesfest is my favourite Australian music festival.  It is better organised, cleaner, friendlier and more relaxed than the other major festivals that I regularly attend (Big Day Out and Soundwave, the latter of which, I’m still yet to write up because I’m lazy).  The crowd is generally older than those other two festivals, which creates the more relaxed vibe.  There are very few teenagers running around who don’t quite have the hang of crowd etiquette yet, spoiling a perfectly good set by yelling about how drunk they are at the top of their lungs and pushing undeserving people out of the way just so they can watch five minutes of a performer before heading off to ruin someone else’s day.  The food at Bluesfest is also outstanding.  Sure, it’s still festival food, but there’s vegetarian, Jamaican, Brazillian, noodles, Mexican, burgers, German sausages, calamari, curry houses and a whole range of good quality food to cater for all (a particular favourite has been Cajun fries, which involves fries being doused in lime mayo and Cajun seasoning).  The toilets are also cleaner; they are regularly cleaned by a dedicated roaming army dubbed “The Poo Crew”.  The weather, this year, was also spectacular with roughly 26˚C (79˚F) and sunshine every day.  All in all, it’s just a brilliant festival that is far superior to its annual, touring counterparts.

So, on with the music.  What I’ve decided to do is break this down into days.  The festival ran for five days, but I only attended four so I will only be writing about them.  I’ll give a list of the performers I saw on the day and write only about the particular highlights or things that are worth mentioning.  Just because I don’t write about an artist doesn’t mean I think they were rubbish, it just means that other things on the day, deserved more attention in my view.  So let’s get stuck in.

Day One: Bobby Alu, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, My Morning Jacket, Cold Chisel, Benjalu

Highlight: My Morning Jacket and that guy wearing the bright purple shirt that said on it, in a large, white font, “START WEARING PURPLE”

Day one of Bluesfest is traditionally slower and more easy going than the rest of the festival.  It’s only a half-day, beginning at 4pm whereas the other days begin at midday.  There are also, on average, far fewer people in attendance on this day.  Most people opt for the three-day, Friday/Saturday/Sunday ticket.  My day began with the calm island grooves of local boy, Bobby Alu.  His ukulele driven music was a nice start to my festival experience.  He’s fairly typical of the local music that appears at Bluesfest; non-confrontational, well played, mostly forgettable, but nice at the time music.  Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue were great as usual.  They groove on stage like few others and suck their audience in with their brass laced funk/soul tunes.  They’re the kind of band who is great live, but I wouldn’t listen to them on record.  My Morning Jacket were easily the highlight of the day.  Their brand of psychedelic ‘70s influenced rock was outstanding live.  Vocalist, Jim James, roamed the stage like a huge bear with his curly locks and ginormous beard, captivating what seemed like an initially sceptical audience.  This band doesn’t have much of a profile here in Australia, but after this tour, tickets might be hard to come by the next time around.  Cold Chisel were, well, Cold Chisel.  They’re a good, solid rock band.  They’re not entirely my cup of tea, but there were plenty of mullet sporting, cigarette smoking, Jim Beam drinking fifty year olds rocking out to suggest that ‘Chisel’ were delivering on every front to their core fanbase.  I just though they were ok.

Day Two: Mat McHugh, Bobby Alu, G3 (Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Steve Lukather), Steve Earle, James Vincent McMorrow, Jonny Lang, Buddy Guy, The Specials

Highlight: Steve Earle

The day began with a solo set from The Beautiful Girls frontman, Mat McHugh.  His Jack Johnson-esque songs were, like Bobby Alu, completely nice.  He did have a few moments that suggested that there is something more there though.  He’s one that might be worth checking out.  G3 was simply hilarious.  I find this kind of music totally unnecessary.  There’s no point to it other than to show off.  It’s just a bunch of cool tricks some dudes can do.  It’s emotionless and totally irrelevant, kind of like a half decent clown show.  The big downside to G3 was their volume.  Poor old Irish singer/songwriter, James Vincent McMorrow, was almost drowned out by the cacophonous guitar noise emanating from the main stage (which was over 300m away).  McMorrow, though, is something special.  He’s got a lot of Bon Iver in him with a touch of City & Colour and the folk stylings of his native Ireland.  What that adds up to is some stunning, heartbreaking music.  Oh, and his completely stripped back cover of Midlake’s Roscoe is brilliant.  Buddy Guy did what Buddy Guy does best.  He delivered some outstanding blues and humoured the crowd with his cheeky nature.  The crowd lapped it up, as they did two years ago when I first saw him at Bluesfest 2010.  Ska legends, The Specials, wowed their fans, but seemed to lack the energy they were known for (or at least the energy that I had been led to believe they had).  They weren’t bad by any stretch; I just think the hype might have been a bit bigger than the reality.  The highlight of the day was the one and only Steve Earle.  Playing by himself with his guitar, bouzouki or his mandolin, Earle had the audience in the palm of his hand for the entirety of his set.  His folk/country protest songs are of the kind that made Bob Dylan a legend.  Earle is one songwriter who has his head on right and continues to push the causes he believes in.  He doesn’t rest on his laurels knowing that he’ll have a captive audience anywhere he goes.  He continues to educate his audience through music and storytelling like few others can.

Day Three: Keb Mo, Vusi Mahlasela, Yann Tiersen, James Vincent McMorrow, Seasick Steve (featuring John Paul Jones), Justin Townes Earle, Ziggy Marley, Brian Setzer’s Rockabilly Riot, John Fogerty

Highlight:  John Fogerty

Ok, I need to wrap this up fairly quickly because it’s already longer than I wanted it to be.  Justin Townes Earle was brilliant.  His country music is full of heartbreak and folk stories like the best country music should be.  Since this performance I have bought all four of his albums and his EP and have been listening to them non-stop ever since.  To me, he shares a certain unique distinction with Jakob Dylan.  Both are the sons of music legends (Jakob Dylan calls Bob Dylan ‘Dad’, just as Justin Townes Earle is the son of the aforementioned Steve Earle), but I prefer the music of the younger generation much more than I do that of the older folk music stalwarts.  I can’t recommend Justin Townes Earle’s music enough if you’re into alternative country/folk/blues/bluegrass in any way, shape or form.  John Fogerty was the big drawcard for this festival.  For the first time since the break-up of Creedence Clearwater Revival in 1972, John Fogerty was playing a set that would consist almost entirely of CCR songs.  It was a chance to see a legend who was part of the mass culture movement that occurred during the late 1960s in the U.S. performing the songs that helped to define that generation.  I don’t think I’d be wrong if I stated that nearly everyone knows at least one Creedence song, regardless of whether they know it’s Creedence or not.  All I can say is that Fogerty delivered on all fronts and met almost all expectations.  He began with playing the classic 1970 album Cosmo’s Factory from start to finish (home to classic Creedence tracks, Lookin’ Out My Back Door, Run Through The Jungle, Up Around The Bend, Who’ll Stop The Rain and their cover of Marvin Gaye’s classic I Heard It Through The Grapevine).  From there, Fogerty ploughed through what was pretty much a CCR greatest hits set.  The only minor complaint that anyone could have had about the it was that the three Fogerty solo tunes as well as the cover of Roy Orbison’s Oh, Pretty Woman could have been easily replaced by other Creedence classics that missed out on an airing; such as Green River, Wrote A Song For Everyone, Born On The Bayou, Bootleg, or their cover of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ I Put A Spell On You.  Obviously though, the privilege of seeing and hearing Fogerty play Creedence tunes outweighed my minor gripes with the setlist choices.

Day Four:  Angelique Kidjo, Bettye LaVette, The Audreys, Maceo Parker, Candi Staton, Josh Pyke, Melbourne Ska Orchestra, The Pogues

Highlight: The Pogues

Angelique Kidjo deserves a special mention here for managing to get 30 audience members on stage to dance with her and her band for twenty minutes (which included a dance off between the various people on stage).  It was typical of what I’ve seen from African performers over the years.  They seem to have a love for life and express that love through music and dance better than any other culture that I can think of.  The biggest regret of this year’s festival was that I could only see twenty minutes of Josh Pyke’s one-hour set.  I’ve never seen him play before, but what I saw, was outstanding and has me obsessively keeping an eye out for tour dates.  The reason I only caught some of his set is that it clashed with the outstanding Melbourne Ska Orchestra.  I’ve written about MSO before and my opinion on them is pretty clear.  I do think though, with their increasing popularity, they need to start switching things up a little bit.  They tend to play the same set every time which can be a problem for a group who prides itself on being a living, breathing catalogue of early 1960s Jamaican ska.  The band of the day would have to have been The Pogues.  These Irish folk punk rockers were one of the acts I was really looking forward to seeing.  The band hasn’t played on Australian soil since 1989 and it was pretty clear that there were many people in the crowd who were dying to see these guys play…and play they did.  The Pogues smashed through a ninety minute set with an energy rarely displayed by a band full of men in their mid-to-late 50s.  They played pretty much everything a Pogues fan would want to hear.  Put simply, they were truly awesome.  Even though Shane McGowan’s brain seems to have been completely fried by his alcoholism, he still delivered the vocal goods.  The set concluded in typical Pogues fashion with McGowan and Spider Stacy smashing beer trays over their heads until they were totally misshapen before flinging them into the crowd as a unique souvenir for two lucky Pogues fans.

In comparison with other Bluesfests, this one was probably the weakest one I had been to (having attended the previous two).  While it was still worth every cent in terms of quality music and performances, it lacked the very special moments provided by Mavis Staples, The Blind Boys of Alabama and Tedeschi Trucks Band in 2011.  Although it is foolish to assume that there will be something truly outstanding every Bluesfest, after such an incredible 2011, it was difficult not to believe that this Bluesfest wouldn’t be as good.  But still, I had an amazing time and will likely be returning again next year.

Overall Highlights

The Pogues

John Fogerty

Justin Townes Earle

My Morning Jacket

Discovery of the Festival

Justin Townes Earle