Blues n’ Roots Review
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Blues n’ Roots Review
Upon our late arrival at Fremantle park, the hosting grounds for the West Coast Blues n’ Roots festival on Sunday April 13th, you could tell that the festivities of the day were still in full swing. The grounds were littered with empty plastic cups and cans of the various alcohol made available, which was an interesting thing to see given that this seemed to be a full on Hippie jam festival. People in Indian headdresses were dancing freely to the music, a few babies were sleeping in slings wrapped around their parents shoulder, a number of dilated pupils and dazed grins could be seen throughout the crowd. Clearly, it had been one hell of a day.
John Mayer and his session musicians had just walked onto the stage as we made our way to the media tent through the roaring crowd. ‘Queen of California’ was Mayer’s opening song, which had the audience either swarming towards the stage, or sitting back on the grass on makeshift cardboard chairs that were given out for free at the event. John Mayer seemed at home on the stage, with his passionate vocals and over exaggerated facial expressions, along with his head nodding to the time signatures of his songs. The audience was swaying and dancing in an almost orgasmic delight while they screamed along to the catchy lyrics. “This is supposed to be a blues festival, right?” Mayer spoke as the band began a cover of Henry Whitters ‘Going Down The Road And Feeling Bad’ a real treat to the ears for the true blues fans in the audience that night. From there it was a nice transition straight into another John Mayer original ‘Slow Dancing In A Burning Room’ causing audience members to hold up lighters and phones and sway along to this soft break up medley. The entirety of John Mayer’s set was a thrill for the eyes and ears, leaving the fans satisfied with the great mixture of new and old material that was presented before them.
From there we made our way to the Big Top stage, where Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros were set to play next. Eccentric doesn’t even describe the persona of front man Edward Sharpe, who sounded a little like Bob Dylan, only a tad more incoherent to begin with. From the word go they had the audience members right where they wanted them; screaming, dancing and having the time of their life. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros even took a song request from someone in the front row after asking the crowd “what do you want to hear us play?” After hundreds of people yelled out dozens of song titles, ‘Mayla’ was the song they chose, making a number of audience members ecstatic that they got the hear the song they wanted to hear most. Edward Sharpe had the stage presence of a man who was born to perform live, dancing around his fellow musicians, even pulling his backup singer Nora Kirkpatrick to the front of the stage to sing and dance together as if they were the reincarnation of Johnny Cash & June Carter. Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros are an act that one does not forget. They have you mesmerized by the energy and precision of the band as well as the entertaining, yet dazed persona of Edward Sharpe.
Making our way back to the Park stage, the sound of a tightened snare drum, reminiscent to the sound of a heavy-duty shotgun echoed its way through Fremantle oval. This was the beginning of Dave Matthews Band, starting their set list with the ever-funky song ‘Ants Marching’ which invoked the crowd to jump around like madmen and throw their fists into the air. Dave Matthews Band had me struck by the precision of each member of the band, especially the drummer, Carter Beauford, who you could not fault in any possible way. This was dancing music if I had ever heard it, with the unrelenting energy from each band member, to the fanatical opening vocals of Dave Matthews opening up the set. Dance circles were forming throughout the crowd for other songs they played like ‘Seven’ and ‘Don’t Drink The Water’. From start to finish, Dave Matthews Band had some serious crowd control and knew how to put on one hell of performance, invoking crowd participation and an eclectic humour that was found in between each song they played.
Michael Franti and Spearhead were the last band of our night, with all the guitarists jumping around the stage, getting the crowd extremely hyped up before the set had even started. Michael Franti then made his way to the centre of the stage with microphone in hand yelling “are you ready?” to the ecstatic crowd. Within the opening song entitled ‘I Don’t Wanna Go’ the crowd was jumping around, bumping into one another, spilling their drinks and getting into the final groove of the night. The energy was magnetic, invoking the party animal in all of the attendants to strike out with an unrelenting bounce that had the ground shaking. Franti proceeded to introduce his band members with a gleaming pride, giving his lead guitarist Jay Bowman and bassist Carl Young a chance to show off their impressive skills with a guitar and bass solo each, that charged through the big top stage like a runaway locomotive, leaving the audience members stunned by their talent. Michael Franti strutted his stuff across the stage whilst spitting some very interesting and powerful lyrics, which showed that Franti was an artist who had something to say, a message he wanted to share, and by god he had strong sense of passion to do so.
The night had reached an end with a big thank you from Michael Franti and all his band mates, sending off a feeling of love and respect, for the fans and for all those who had witnessed the spectacle of their performance. As the crowds shuffled out onto the busy streets that were lined with taxis, cops and buskers, there was a calmness that had washed over the half wrecked, half sunburnt attendants. A sense that now, it was only a matter of another twelve more months, before we could all come back together and do this all again.
By Daniel Morley
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