It’s raining! What a surprise… We are yet to play at a dry festival with the exception of the Ani DiFranco show we did at Cassegrain’s Winery (the hottest day I can remember in a long time…).
There is no way a bit of rain is going to ruin our day today - and besides I haven’t been to a dry Bluefest yet, so as you can imagine the organizers have got it ‘covered’ – pardon the pun!
We pull up in the artist car park (trying not to get bogged) and are quickly ushered into a van and are taking to the most amazing dressing room set up I have seen. The whole back stage area is like a busy air port terminal with golf buggies, passenger vehicles, quad bikes and small tucks buzzing around everywhere, it’s all a bit overwhelming you feel like your late for something, but then soon realise it’s just business as usual.
We are shown to our dressing room and I must say I felt a little guilty about the amount of trouble someone had gone too for us…there was a table laid out with all kinds of goodies, flower arrangements, wine and a full esky.
Next we had to go and drop off all of our merch and before we could even ask there was a buggy ready and waiting…we all jump on with the merch on our laps and off we go. We are driven down this muddy trail sliding and jumping all over the place soon we get to the merch tent and off load our stuff…we head back to our dressing room to get our gear together, so we can take it over to the Apra stage where we were playing, only to find that all of our stuff had already been taken over to the stage and all we had to do was tell someone when we where ready to go over to the stage and someone would take us (this is all to easy).
We where on at 1:15 and had to be back stage at 12:45 to start setting up, it was 12:30 and thought I should give Lisa (Hunt) a call to see where she was (as she was making a special appearance with us) to find she was stuck in Byron, in traffic!... If you’ve ever been to Byron around Bluesfest time you’ll know the kind of traffic I’m talking about so she was at least 30mins away.
Anyway we all jump in a car and are driven to the APRA stage where we are met by a friendly English production manager after a quick chat the act before us finished and it was time to start setting up (still no Lisa) we get the 5min call and here is Lisa just in time so we have a 30sec rehearsal as where walking to the stage.
I’m just about to for fill one of my life’s ambitions you can imagine the excitement that was running through me… we stepped out onto the stage and where met with a great applause and a surprisingly full tent so we fire into the first song. The crowed responds beautifully so we roll on through the set and when we where about half way through I noticed the tent filling quite considerably.
I also notice a bunch of about 20 Barrel House fans dancing together scattered through the crowed with coloured t-shirts on. I then notice their tops have a letter spray painted on the front… When I looked closer I realised this colourful bunch suddenly take formation to spell “BARREL HOUSE BLUES 09” they proceed to take the roll of some kind of Barrel House cheer squad pumping up the crowed.
We punch through the set getting to last two songs where we invite Lisa into stage, at this point the tent is brimming with smiley jumpy people and I have some kind of outer body experience watching my dream becoming a reality.
Lisa just blows everyone away with her huge voice and perfected pitch, we come to the last song “Open Road” and as I break into the chorus suddenly the Barrel House cheer squad break into a well choreographed dance full of “air punching”, “body rolls” and “grapevines”. I nearly loose it with laughter but managed to keep it together and finish the song.
Everything went great and after the show I jump off stage to get a photo with the cheer squad and shortly after our show we are taken over to the signing tent and I am amazed to see 2 lines of about 20 or so people I straight away assume that someone else must be doing a signing I ask the merch guys they said “yes some one else is doing a signing too, but the line on the left is for you guys”… still not sure I asked the people lining up who confirmed with a cheer! We got meet some great people and signed cd’s, t-shirts, singlets and even the odd arm.
After all that we headed back to our dressing room to talk about everything that just happened… it was a crazy couple of hours.
We had a meal that you’d expect to find in a 5 star restaurant cooked backstage. We met some great people and again were blown away by the home grown talent we have.
We had one the best days ever and want to thank all the Bluesfest team and the wonderful people who came and rocked out with us and also a special mention has to go to anyone in the cheer squad. Hope to see you again next year.