Bluesfest 2013 Day Four

It's a relatively early start for us today as we don't want to miss the sole set from Irish troubadour Luka Bloom, who opens the Crossroads stage. It proves to be a good move, as he's at his hauntingly beautiful best and chooses a brilliant selection of tunes. The Fertile Rock, Exploring The Blue and Love Is A Monsoon are dripping with emotion and spirit, while between songs Bloom is simply charming. He's such an endearing character, full of Irish wit and charm but far from over the top. He seems genuinely chuffed to be here too. He dedicates City Of Chicago to the Irish expats in the crowd, thanks Mark Seymour for gifting the world such a beautiful song after Throw Your Arms Around Me and tells a tall tale of scoring from Lance Armstrong when needing assistance to get through a performance. His show is like a warm embrace from an old friend and I can't wait to catch up with him again in a couple of years' time.

Another quick dose of Allen Toussaint is too appealing to pass up and it's a shame to leave his set of slick New Orleans funk, that opens with There's A Party Goin' On, but Tony Joe White is about to hit the APRA stage – what an embarrassment of riches!

The coolest man in blues (coolest man in the world?) Tony Joe White smirks and points at a couple of audience members as he walks on stage, sits centrestage with his guitar and blazes through an hour of scintillating swamp rock. After a deep and dark Stockholm Blues, drummer Fleetwood Cadillac joins him onstage for the majority of the set, they rip through Undercover Agent For the Blues, Roosevelt & Ira Lee and the raucous Do You Have  Garter Belt. He recalls being at Bluesfest for the first time many years ago and being inspired to write The Delta Singer, an incredible song that has real power when heard at this event, runs through a new tune called Hold Up and ends with the great double of Even Trolls Love Rock'n'Roll and Polk Salad Annie.

The sky looks awfully threatening which lends an extra kind of gravitas to the deep spiritual vocals of Sweet Honey In The Rock. Their onstage demeanour is so very warm and pleasant, the arrangements of the songs are so complex but made to sound so simple and their sound today is unobstructed by bleed from the other tents, making it a real special experience. I Remember, I Believe is aired in tribute to all of our ancestors before a medley of spirituals that were repopularised with the Civil Rights Movement. We'll have them back anytime, thank you very much.

Roger Hodsgon and band sound immense as they open with Take The Long Way Home; while people raved about his past Bluesfest performance, this evening's must be on another level for Supertramp fans as the songs are full fleshed out and really amped up. Take A Look At My Girlfriend is a mid-set highlight as a huge crowd of grinning faces soak up hit after hit from the classic rock legend.

Last year we had Justin Townes Earle into Steve Earle on the small Jambalaya stage and this year's unmissable back-to-back program is a soul extravaganza featuring two great singers backing up from last year.

Bettye LaVette has an excellent new record that she's released since her last Aussie dates, so there's plenty from it aired this evening. Her leathery, rugged but tender voice rips through I'm Not The One and Tom Waits' Yesterday Is Here while her band ooze class but they have enough grit to make things pop. She laments not being featured on American Bandstand due to the nature of her 1962 single My Man – He's A Lovin' Man before a devastating rendition of Gnarls Barkley's Crazy (“I've been crazy for a long time,” she says) and The Moody Blues' Knights In White Satin. The set ends with LaVette giving huge props to Renee Geyer as they close on (As Close As I'll Get To) Heaven.

Part two of this soulful celebration sees the great Mavis Staples and her band hit the stage and open with an a capella Wonderful Saviour before keeping that theme going this Easter Sunday with Creep Along Moses. They go secular as they run through John Fogerty's Wrote A Song For Everyone and Levon Helm's The Weight and then Staples gives some historical context to the uninitiated by saying that Why Am I Treated So Bad was Dr Martin Luther King's favourite song. The Staple Singers were such a vital part of the Civil Rights Movement and the fire in Staples' heart has not died down one iota judging by tonight's performance; Freedom Highway sounding as full of life as you'd imagine it did way back when.

People hang off of Staples' every word in this gorgeously intimate environment, and so they should. We're Gonna Make It and Eyes On The Prize are both very cool, but it's the closing I'll Take You There that sends the audience into an absolute frenzy; the iconic tune bringing everyone to life and confirming that, no matter how many times we've seen Staples in the past, what we witness tonight is truly special.

A bit of tent hopping is in order next, thanks to the weather being kind enough to hold out on us; SOJA play a brand of west coast reggae with a mighty big sound and the tent starts to smell pretty funny not too far into their set. A quick spot of The Lumineers shows that their popularity seems to grow by the day, they've packed out the Crossroads tent but manage to fill it out with their sparse sound quite well. It's unoriginal but you can understand why so many find it palatable.

After last night I simply must hear Dr Burt sing the blues again, so we run to the Cavanbah just as he's kicking off his set – which seems closer to five minutes tonight. I implore you to watch this man play if you're ever given the chance, he's the real deal.

We close out tonight with the fresh rockabilly sounds of JD McPherson and his band. It's all pretty much as expected, endearing, energetic, tuneful and a lot of innocent fun. Song titles like Country Boy and Farmer John might give you a bit of an idea about the way their brand of '50s inspired rock leans. They are such a fun rock'n'roll band that it honestly seems like it would be difficult to not like them at least a little bit; they're not offensive but they pack a bit of a punch and the tunes and harmonies are on point. Bo Diddley's Hangin' Round Here sees bassist Jimmy Southern take the mic, while Firebug and Mona stand out

If yesterday I felt tired, today I'm about to drop. Bluesfest comes home strong today, though; Paul Simon will be too much fun, Bonnie Raitt will blow minds, more doses of Mavis Staples and Wilco are not negotiable (could we see a Tweedy cameo in Staples' set?) and how will the big country jam band sound of the Zac Brown Band go with an Aussie audience? This time tomorrow there'll be a great sadness that it's all over for another year, so it's time to embrace the final leg of what has been such a great event thus far.