Blogging With The Bluesfest

6 April 2012 | 12:24 pm | Dan Condon

Day 1 of Bluesfest 2012: Ziggy Marley, Nick Lowe, My Morning Jacket, Canned Heat, John Hiatt, Cold Chisel, and Lucinda Williams.

The classic Easter traffic that jams up the highways hasn't quite taken hold yet as we cruise down to Byron Bay today, a bizarrely smooth run into and through the Byron Bay town centre ensuring our spirits, which are so very high in anticipation of another few days of Bluesfest, aren't sullied. After the blogging nerve centre is set up in the idyllic Suffolk Park, it's time to make the long trek into Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm – the next two hours featuring lots of walking, lots of lining up, and lots of wishing we were watching music instead. The closest I get to a live performance comes from the kids behind me on the bus to the show; not a whisker over 16, they were excited to be in possession of a bottle of vodka and let us all know via their renditions of modern pop masterpieces; the highlight (that is really not an appropriate word for their grating screeches) being Chamillionaire's Ridin'.

Ziggy Marley is pumping out his old man's Is This Love as we get through the gates and the familiar sights, smells, and indeed sounds of Bluesfest make you feel like you've never left. We're hungry for music, so the first sight of Nick Lowe and his four-piece backing band is very welcome indeed. There's a lot more twang to Lowe's set tonight than expected, but he could perform these songs in Weird Al-esque polka mode and they'd still sound pretty great (and that's saying something). The heavy '50s country/rockabilly bent he's put on the songs works very well though and would be sure to silence anyone questioning his spot on the festival's bill.

The setlist is great; Has She Got A Friend?, I Trained Her To Love Me, and I Live On A Battlefield are strong early on before House For Sale from his latest record proves he's still in pretty great touch as far as songwriting goes. According to iTunes I've listened to be Cruel To Be Kind some 180 times (I think it's more) so I might be a little biased, but that song is a standout of the set, its disturbing chorus still executed with aplomb by the white-haired, well-dressed 63-year-old. Somebody Cares For Me is beautiful and When I Write The Book is so good it wouldn't surprise me if every songwriter in the audience was weeping with jealousy.

We make a quick dash over the to Mojo tent where My Morning Jacket are blazing away hard, but after half an hour they're still yet to grab me completely. Holdin' On To Black Metal was one of the great songs of last year but it just sounds a little too on point tonight and the energy doesn't feel right. During the set we're faced with our first annoying hippie of the weekend, a woman chanting 'irie, irie, irie' as if seeing half a Ziggy Marley set somehow negates the fact she's from the outer suburbs of Brisbane and not Jamaica. Takes all types.

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I feel drawn to Canned Heat over at the Jambalaya tent next so drag the posse over for a look promising, “If it's not awesome, it should be a bit of a laugh”. Like MMJ the band put in something of a middling performance, nothing wrong with it but nothing to rave about either. Being bailed up by an Angry Anderson lookalike during Let's Work Together the highlight.

We make our way to see the headliners via John Hiatt and his band, playing to a half-full Crossroads tent. One thing you're guaranteed of at any Bluesfest is a solid bunch of “I'm not as young as I used to be” jokes from the middle aged musicians. Hiatt knocks one of these out of the park before smashing out a devastating version of Cry Love, which makes us realise that we really should try and catch more of him tomorrow.

There has been some contention about Cold Chisel headlining Bluesfest, I for one am in full support of this great Australian band playing and tonight I'd like to think they've brought a few more people around to the idea. Standing On The Outside draws streams of people into the tent, the band and their songs are utterly magnetic. Cheap Wine picks things up further before they deliver the awesome title track to their new record No Plans. Everything works as it should – Saturday Night is littered with beautifully cheesy sax, Ian Moss works overtime in Forever Now, My Baby is just a cracking song, and Khe Sanh prompts one hell of a singalong, as you could only imagine. They rip into Bow River and, despite the fact I'm really enjoying myself, I feel bad that I'm missing Lucinda Williams so I duck over to end the night with her.

She's sounding pretty great when I arrive, running through Blessed from her new record of the same name and Buttercup follows, sounding just as good. Things seem to be going pretty smoothly until Williams chokes up halfway through Essence, seemingly having some serious voice issues, and begins to get very frustrated. She tries to push through it but ends up stamping her feet and wandering off as her band very tidily cover up. She returns with a spoonful of honey and barks through Changed The Locks from her self-titled 1988 record and while she sounds devastatingly good, it's hard to connect with her as she nervously reads the lyrics from her music stand.

All that's left now is to lament the death of civility as we wait in line for a bus and think about what tomorrow will bring. My picks for the day are Steve Earle, Buddy Guy, and the David Bromberg Band.