Written by Nick Acquroff
I’m sitting at the bus terminal in Johnson Street watching the shuttle close in. This is a small problem because my dear friend Kate still hasn’t returned from her pre festival spree. Two small bottles of spirits, three or four bottles of apple cider and a packet of cigarettes has become a daily ritual on the 25 minute shuttle from Byron Bay to Tyagrah – the new home of the East Coast Blues and Roots Festival. Today she is a little sluggish but I find it hard to care, because there is so much to see here. There is always such a vivid pulse in this melting pot town and never more so than at Easter every year, when the music loving masses converge on Byron Bay to create one of the most diverse and interesting streetscapes in the world.
The Blues Festival has grown considerably (not unlike everything else in Byron Bay) since its inaugural jam in 1990. It begun at the arts factory, which is now considered a small but well respected band venue just out of town, with just over 100 people. Twenty years later, the festival accommodates 17,500 people per day, 6,500 campers and over 85,000 people in total. This year, the Festival is headlined by Crowded House and Jack Johnson, as well as The Fray, Colin Hay Band, John Butler Trio, Jeff Beck, Angus & Julia Stone, Taj Mahal and at least 100 other acts.
I’m sitting amongst 25 or 30 backpackers while they wait for the next Greyhound Bus to Melbourne, Sydney or Perth; wondering, when Kate bursts around the corner. She is holding a brown paper bag full to the top. She passes the old railway where the crazies congregate to drink longnecks and brushes off the incoherent remarks. As she turns towards them she smashes into the back of a man and drops the entire contents of her paper bag. I notice that he has a love heart shaved in to his chest hair and laugh at how peculiarly normal he looks in this street.
As our shuttle closes its doors and begins to drive away without us, we sit in the middle of the unwashed hoard of backpackers who simultaneously stand as the Greyhound arrives. We finish our drinks alone in the shelter and wait our turn for a ride into the fourth day of the festival. We are seeing Crowded House tonight.
I’m wandering around quite aimlessly taking photos. The Tyagrah site is more like a giant carnival than a music festival. There are six colossal circus tents grasping for their share of the skyline, there is a Ferris wheel, (which lost a carriage and dropped two people thirteen metres to the muddy ground), there are jewellery shops for anyone who wants to get decked out in hippie clothes and fairy lights wherever you turn. There are people everywhere, families, lovers, teenagers on ecstasy and stoned locals. I bypass the food stalls to the APRA stage, where soul blues musician Eugene ‘Hideaway’ Bridges is half way through his wonderfully authentic blues set. The APRA tent continually pumps out musicians like this, from all over the world. Eugene and his band are straight out of Texas, he a towering man with a huge voice, playing an unparalleled brand of blues. After his set I ask him for a short interview and politely obliges. ‘There’s been a lot of change out here since I started comin’ in 1995’ he says. ‘you get a lot of different people here now, actually you just get a lot of people’. He talked for a while about the love he feels from the crowd and spat out a bunch of soulful clichés, but I had turned the tape recorder off. He seems to love this place and the people love him.
After some corn and a few $10 cans of mixed spirits Kate and I head down to the Mojo tent where Crowded House are playing in an hour’s time. The Mojo tent in itself is an amazing piece of construction, large enough to hold six to eight thousand people under its roof. With all the rain over the weekend, the sides of the tent become swamps where kids jump around in gumboots and people lie in the mud after too much acid or mushrooms. It’s also brilliant, because people sit outside the tent on their deckchairs and can watch from a distance.
We wriggle our way to the front as Neil Finn walks onto stage and begins. “She came all the way from America, she had a blind date with destiny”. He pauses as the band starts up and the audience turns into a mass choir. “and the sound of Te Awamutu has a truly sacred ring”. He pauses again and the audience holds the note. I have never heard anything like this. Ten thousand voices, in all different styles and ranges mirroring the vocal. Nick Seymour and Neil talk like old friends around a fire place, making jokes like nobody is watching. They make you cosy and they make you sing.
It’s day five and I’m watching brother sister duo Angus & Julia Stone, who glide into the Blues Fest line up. Their set is like a living room, with wall paper and old armchairs. They sing with such effortless harmony, they connect with each other and the crowd. Their new stuff is simultaneously electric and airy. Angus pushes the delay on his electric guitar; while Julia’s hands caress whimsy from the keys. For a younger audience, there have been some great bands to see. The John Butler Trio enjoy full crowd energy, whether you find their music as attractive as a stray patchouli burner in a total fire ban or not. Blue King Brown, although boorishly political were full of energy and Colin Hay charms the crowd like your father telling jokes as he burns the snags on the barbie. I find myself sitting again by the ferris wheel pondering what has just taken place while my companion Kate is going through her familiar routine of crying her way in to the male toilets. I can see two local girls, stoned and kicking around in their gumboots when I realise it’s not so much the music that charms the crowds here at the festival, it’s something more than that. Like a hippy cliche , it’s about being there and experiencing it.
Watch the highlights from Day 1 of the festival below
