Live Review: A Day On The Green

Be warned that doing an outdoor one-day festival in a winery may just about spoil your ability to enjoy any other type of outdoor event ever again: Good wine sold by the bottle (and not at inner-city prices), along with proper food and (let's be blunt) dunnies Kenny would be proud of.

Whitley started the bill playing in the mid-afternoon sun with an even set of originals, rounded off by a Daniel Lanois song via Emmylou Harris, Where Will I Be. Next Bob Evans was, simply, charming as. Playing with a faithful musical sidekick renamed 'Poncho', he had inner-city looks but country romance totally down. Singles Nowhere Without You, Don't Wanna Grow Up Anymore and You've Been On My Mind were early slightly sozzled favourites, easily (and he even let Poncho off for a mid-set smoko to play Darlin' Won't You Come? solo).  Sarah Blasko then literally sparkled with long gloves and a sultry semi-operatic set – fewer sing-alongs than might have been expected but certainly an appropriately atmospheric vibe. In between set-ups DJ Grand Master Bait (geddit?) impersonated great moments in rock'n'roll cliché (including bedroom tennis racket rocker, '80s hair metal, Accadacca school boy goodness) and it was as good (and as strange) a segue as any to go from Blasko's gentle contemplation to '90s surf rock mongrels The Cruel Sea. As the sun went down Tex Perkins and his boys started with a mellow instrumental, then gradually built to full bore with The Honeymoon Is Over, Better Get A Lawyer, Anybody But You and Black Stick. Chatting between songs Perkins sounded a little croakier than normal (summer cold or sampling the local finery?), but the tunes didn't suffer in the slightest. By the time headliner Bernard Fanning made the stage just before eight, there was a nice buzz in the now much cooler air (30-odd degrees in early November is still a bit scary). Fanning's set was built on the back of his solo albums, Tea And Sympathy and Departures, providing a contemplative come down. Although the themes in the music were sometimes heavy (Watch Over Me, in particular, always gets the heartstrings), Fanning's reputation as a lover not a fighter seems to have not made it to everyone in the surrounds. In between tunes he told us of his first night in town the evening before, where a local challenged him and a bandmate to a fight in the main watering hole. Complete with a 'five punch head start' if they just gave in and gave the old boozer a bit of entertainment, Fanning declined, dedicating Not Finished Yet to him (but also with a direct 'fuck you buddy' to start). Rounding out his time with lighter versions of singles like Yesterday's Gone, the Day was green and groovy indeed.