Name on a Tshirt and first festival blog!
BILL...you're in my shot Bro.
Heck of a line up. The weather forecast for the last few days warned of downpour by Sunday. The Heavens held off for the morning, fortunately, as this weekend seemed to be the weekend for Sydneysiders to be out doors. they held a breakfast on the Harbour Bridge, open days at the Opera House, the Blues Festival, good lord. Maybe its the strange early moments of summer we've had.
In any case, the crowd were out in force at the Sydney Blues Fest. Cheers to Hugo for Two Introductions(first act to have an intro during sound check), to Ron (keep at it dude), Lynn, Val and everyone who chose to give up seeing Don Hopkins (where Paul would rather have been) to come see us!
We were the first act for the day at the Fitzroy, whilst other venues were starting at various staggered times.
For our part, we had a solid 90 minute set with a good vibe. The crowd were out for a good day and just getting started so I asked permission before we played Mississippi Meltdown at 11:45am....but that's OK! For those curious about set reflections, most of the stuff went well today. Sweet Misery which has needed a bit of a revamp started to get back to normal, in fact the only thing that didn't seem to fire was Yamanote Line and Scruff of your neck. The intro to Swamp Monster was spot on. I had the wrong harp for a moment and had to make a quick change (YIKES) during swamp, but by and large, it was Ok from the cockpit (no one fell asleep!)
We had fun, the crowd had fun and the best bit was, as we were on early in the day, we could go see the other acts. As soon as we were done, the band disappeared to go see various faves.
Straight on after us was the Charlie Harper band, so I grabbed a few moments of footage:
I expect this will be the first of a few posts about this, so I will keep this one brief and end with a big thanks to Bob, Gary, Stan and the and the Sydney Blues Festival crew.
MJEB