During our first few days arriving here in Australia we caught wind of a music festival that takes place over Easter Weekend every year in Byron Bay. We got our hands on the line up and discovered that two of our favorite musicians of all time, Matt Corby (as seen in our first ever blog post) and Jack Johnson were schedule to play back to back on Friday of the five day festival. We also soon discovered that this year was the 25th Anniversary of Blues Fest- the event was, quite literally, coming of Quarter Age. With that, our tickets were purchased.
Typical of our travels so far, we had no concrete plans for the weekend aside from renting a car out of Burleigh Heads. We soon discovered that this was the worst possible weekend and location in all of Australia to have no plan, and quite literally had NO WHERE to stay or even park our car to sleep in for the night— police dub the weekend “Double Demerits” and charge double for any illegal camping or driving tickets. Lucky for us, Ian met an incredible family at the festival that hosted us along with several other festival goers for the weekend in tents in their back yard… To say we got lucky is an understatement!
As for the festival its self, the entire event was even better than we had imagined. Seven stages, hundreds of vendors, and thousands of music-loving Aussies and travelers alike. We spent the day eating great food, dancing between tents, making new friends, and of course, listening to live music. Some notable performances from early in the day were The Beards (from our last blog post), Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, and India Arie to name a few. Several hours prior to Matt Corby we began to make our way through the crowd of the main tent in order to get as close to the stage as humanly possibly. Three acts and four straight hours of standing later we found ourselves in the second row, awestruck by his angelic performance. To say the guy can sing only scratches the surface. He was immediately followed by an incredible two hour set by Jack Johnson that ended with a tear-inducing encore tribute to his wife of 20 years. The song Angels- written by Jack one Christmas when he forgot to get her a present- has taken a whole new meaning for the two of us. Music is, without a doubt, our religion.
Rather than posting music videos, we thought we would give you a taste of our two favorite performers from Blues Fest… we took these videos stage-side and hope they give you a bit of the magic we got from being there!
Coming of quarter age 