Yesterday, Tone Deaf reported on the sad news that US blues rock giants The Black Keys had cancelled their Australian tour, including their headlining spot at Bluesfest, which is set to kick off next weekend in Byron Bay.
Naturally, as the news set in, the question that immediately sprung to everyone’s minds was: who will Bluesfest organisers get to replace them? Well, organiser Peter Noble recently appeared on Triple J to quell some rumours and fuel others.
“We’ve got just about a week to get somebody else and get them announced, but it’s so hard because you can’t get a visa in that time,” Noble told Sarah Howells. “Maybe we should have a competition,” Noble said, before mentioning some of the acts his team has in mind.”
“British India’s on the shortlist. Spiderbait’s on the shortlist. Kingswood’s on the shortlist. Because they need to be bands that are a bit like that has cancelled.”
“Matt Corby was interested but I thought ‘I love you Matt and I know the audience loves you, but I wonder if it needs to rock out a bit more.'”
“That’s all the stuff that I have to do in my job now, and trying to come up with the impossible replacement, because you can’t really replace The Black Keys.”
[include_post id=”441653″]
When Noble was asked about when the public would be informed of a replacement, Noble replied, “As soon as we know. Right now I’m looking at what’s available and then going ‘Who’s the best one to pick?’”
“There’s so many suggestions on our Facebook, and people just going ‘well get Ben Harper to do another show’ or ‘get Michael Franti to come’ or ‘get Sticky Fingers to play twice,’” Noble continued.
“We evaluate all of that, and it’s just something that if you’re going to be a good Festival Director you’ve got to be constantly listening to the people who are coming.”
Noble also elaborated on Carney’s injury, saying, “Up until the 10 week phase he was healing, but then there was a complication of infection, and it’s called adhesive capsulitis, known as frozen shoulder, occurred really only a week and a half ago, and I think that put the kibosh on it.”
[include_post id=”440191″]
“There’s just no way that he could come after that happened. So it was all looking good until a week and a half ago,” he added. “They’re not even saying when they could come back. I personally feel it could be a long road for Patrick Carney.”
“I think it could be prolonged, and hopefully it isn’t… This sort of stuff can be very very serious, it’s a real complication. And it’s real, I’ve seen the medical reports,” said the promoter.
Despite the loss of what many viewed as one of the festival’s main draws, as well as the previous cancellations of Lenny Kravitz and Ben Howard, Noble said Bluesfest has nearly sold out its Friday and Saturday night events. Listen to the full interview via Triple J.
