Easter bluesfest

There is no better way to celebrate the original vagabond then to spend Easter at the East Coast Blues & Roots Festival in Byron Bay. We had a blast and I got to hear some fantastic music. The greatest part was getting to hear Don McLean sing "American Pie" and John Fogerty do all his Credence Clearwater Revival hits. This is music that my dad taught me about and it is stuff that I never thought I would get to hear preformed live by their original songwriters in my lifetime. It was spectacular! Check out the video bar to hear/see some of these oldies get down.

On Thursday, we got to Ballina just in time to set up our tent and then head to Byron for Xavier Rudd's performance. We met up with Flosi and Newbes and we all jammed out and waited for John Butler Trio to come on. However, after a couple of John Butler Trio's songs I started to feel a bit dizzy and then I fainted. After that, I didn't really feel like hanging out with a bunch of hippies so Ayis drove us back to Ballina. The next day, of course, when we saw Newbes and Flosi again they thought it was hilarious to pretend to faint at the mere mention of John Butler's name. Apparently this joke never gets old as it was used for the whole rest of the trip.

Austin, Ayis' brother, came down on Saturday and Sunday to go to the festival with us and do some surfing/beach Frisbee/wrestling. The whole Bluesfest was quite good. We saw some good acts, some not so good acts, and some really tripped out people. As you can see Ayis seems to have had a real good time and really enjoyed the music. One of my highlights was listening to the Cat Empire while standing on Austin's shoulders. It was kind of scary but really awesome cause being short you never really get to see anything. I liked it so much I wanted to practice with Ayis so that I could do that all the time. It didn't really work out so well when we tried it.

Newish bands to check out:

Bedouin Soundclash-Canadian fusion of rock, reggae, punk, and soul

GOCOO + GoRo-Maybe only good live, but they rocked out. Thing of an Asian "stomp" but with more indigenous drums and very angry looking chicks

Goyte-A younger Moby

True Live-Hip hop with a 4 string orchestra

O.A.R.-Washington DC rock group, the sax player is ridiculously cute!

Rodrigo y Gabriela- This duo did things on the guitar I am pretty sure have never been done before

My old favourites of Bluesfest:

John Butler Trio

Xavier Rudd

The Lost Dogs

John Fogerty

Don McLean

KT Tunstall