Into the Blues

Should we? That last set was so much f*kn fun and we’ve heard some great music this year.

Really?!!!, we’re about to get on the road for 11months, another big-ticket item?

Yeah, but we saw around 40 bands so that's only $15 each, per act. It’s a no-brainer.

And this is how we ended up with two tickets for BluesFest 2025 without even knowing the line-up. It’s also how we’ve always seemed to buy our ticket for next year’s event – coming off the high of a dynamic set with us dancing around a tent, sometimes in ankle deep mud.

This year it was PJ Morton - pure joy.

Discovering The Byron Bay Bluesfest in 2013, was the perfect remedy for two New Orleans Jazz Fest tragics who thought they’d never find anything similar on the other side of the world. It helped that in the first years we went, Trombone Shorty, Allen Toussaint, Blind Boys of Alabama, Santana, Gary Clark Jr, Betty Lavette, Terrance Simien, George Clinton, Sheryl Crow, Nile Rogers, The Soul Rebels, Jimmy Buffet, Bonnie Raitt, Gregory Porter, Leon Bridges, Dumpstaphunk . . . to name more than a few, brought their vibe across a very big pond. We’ve been hooked, shared our obsession with a few friends and try and go back year after year to this small, but big-hearted showcase of talent.

It's never just blues. The fest attracts some very big names from all genres of music, but that’s really not the main reason we go. It’s more a sense of discovering new talent, watching a local band before they ever explode on social media or get their picture on the cover of Rolling Stone. This year we wandered a lot (there are four stages plus buskers around) and caught loads of good sounds. A few standouts included Sweet Talk with their Southern blues bent; Little Quirks featuring a young mostly female roster; Pierce Brothers, twins who rely on busking equipment to bring indie blues roots beats to the stage; a seventeen year old Ben Swissa singing originals in a crystal clear falsetto; Caravana Sun, their latest release is on a whole new level, even though they've been around a while; Coterie, a stage-confident band of Perth raised Kiwi brothers and their dad on drums, and finally the duo act Velvet Trip taking the crowd on some psychedelic soundscapes and smooth 60s throw back.

They say music is a great unifier, and the crowds at Bluesfest cover all ages, dress sense, and dance ability known to man. At times, crowd watching can be just as entertaining as the main attraction. Then again, you can “dance like nobody’s watching” (which we do often). By the end of the day, it’s either blistered, sore or muddy feet – all a sign we made a good effort.

We don’t camp at the fest, having witnessed flooded tents and mud-soaked vans through numerous years of Easter holiday storms. Instead, we’ve found the perfect beach-side studio in New Brighton just a 15-minute drive from the 120 hectares festival site at Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm. It’s a pretty set routine of morning coffee at The Salty Mangrove, beach wander/swim, festival fancy dress prep and then a late-night return after a hard day of nothing but tunes for a glass of wine and the ocean soundtrack. 

Experiencing live music has always been one of our “couples’ things”. It brings us closer and makes us more present. With us starting an 11 month break from everything, this year’s fest served as a bridge to what was about to begin. Call it our “coupler”, connecting the past month putting 30 years’ worth of our life in storage with our first stop, a month in Bali.

Here goes . . .