It feels as though the dust kicked up by the last Bluesfest has barely settled on the grounds of the scenic Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm, but believe it or not, Byron Bay Bluesfest 2016 is next month.

This year’s instalment of Australia’s premier blues, roots, folk, rock, and funk event is topped by appearances from Kendrick Lamar, The National, Brian Wilson, D’Angelo and the very welcome return of ‘adopted Aussie’ City and Colour.

Though the event may have swelled in scale and esteem over the last two and a half decades, the festival’s ethos isn’t such a far cry from its origins, first birthed in Australia in 1990 as the East Coast Blues & Roots Music Festival at the now defunct Byron Bay venue The Arts Factory to a crowd of 6,000.

One thing that hasn’t changed at all however is festival promoter Peter Noble’s unwavering passion for music discovery and ongoing mission to share great new music with his loyal Bluesfest attendees. We caught up with Noble to find out just what goes into curating a festival lineup of this calibre and how acts can get his attention.

The First Considerations For Picking A Lineup

“If you wanna have a great festival, you’ve always gotta’ be challenging both yourself and the audience.”

“Every Bluesfest I do has got to be the best one I’ve done.”

“If you go to our Facebook page that’s where we put up a lot of our emerging artists and I would argue for the world class quality artists like Lukas Nelson, gee Neil Young picked him to go on tour for his latest record it’s the first band he’s handpicked since Crazy Horse.

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“If you have a look at the calibre of the artists we post, these are acts that are not known in Australia but once they play Bluesfest they’re going to be more than just an unknown, they’re going to have fans. It’s part of our job.

“Bluesfest has always done that – we discovered Jack Johnson when he was a surfer in Honolulu and paid him three grand and an airfare to come down and play Bluesfest.

“We did the same with Ben Harper a few years before that, that’s what we do. Not all of them become giant, but that’s some of the best parts for Bluesfest is witnessing the break out artists that are playing for the first time.”

“That’s what I see my job as doing; discovering weird artists.”

“We’re not going through a real festival breakout phase at the moment, where maybe that was 10 years ago, when people said ‘well I’m going to two or three festivals this year.’ I reckon everyone is going to one now. So you’ve gotta be the one they go to and have the best things going on that make people go ‘gee that event may be 30 bucks more expensive, but look at how much better it is’.

“With Bluesfest we care about the experience the punters have and we care about when they walk in the door, that very first band is going to be a knockout. You don’t get on Bluesfest ‘cause you’re on a big agency and they’ve said ‘yeah you’ve gotta take this guy too’ – we say ‘no’ unless we want ‘em.”

The Artists Bluesfest is Introducing in 2016

Kaleo: “I was in Toronto in May at Canadian Music Week and then I went to Reykjavik and I discovered Kaleo there who just had six number one singles in a row and i just went ‘this band is unbelievable’. They’re kinda roots and so I booked them!

“I reckon Kaleo is as good as anything out there – the lead singer is a star! He’s not a star because he’s handsome, well yes he is handsome in a Scandivanian kind of way, but he’s a great singer and songwriter and they got picked up by William Morris and Atlantic, and they’ve got Arcade Fire’s person producing their first album.

“Mick Jagger just had them rushed into a studio to work on recordings with him, so it’s not like I’m the only guy that’s discovering them, but it’s nice to be out there in those original groups of people discovering people.”

Brothers Landreth: “You know the Brothers Landreth, I was with them at Nashville at the Pollstar awards in February [2015] and the agent Paul Lohr who books the Avett Brothers started telling me about them. Agents tell all promoters about bands but at the end of that wrap he said ‘now I’ve gotta tell you something’ and I said ‘Paul what?’ and he said ‘I didn’t get ‘em for my agency – they went with someone else.’ He said ‘that’s the best band I never got.’ That’s when my ears pricked up, because this guy was telling me how great a band was that he didn’t get.

“I’ll stand by it – Brothers Landreth they won the Juno Awards [2014] best roots album, but they’re kind of a bit like the Eagles but cooler. That’s the stuff I’m about – going out and finding stuff like that.”

Con Brio: “Michael Franti’s manager called me, she moved on from Michael about a year ago and said ‘I’ve got a new band Peter and you’ve gotta’ have ’em, trust me – Con Brio’ and I was like ‘Woah’.

“I mean you see guys who get all the press like Leon Bridges. Leon Bridges wouldn’t dare walk on the stage after Con Brio gets up. That guy is a great soul singer and he’s young and he dances.”

“You go to Bluesfest and you see artists that we’re breaking. Our intention as a touring company as well is to develop these artists to be working with guys like Lord Huron who are taking off overseas or Blackberry Smoke is another one or Vintage Trouble – to me that’s the most exciting part of Bluesfest, you can see some of the best up and coming acts and there won’t be one of them who are slouches.”

How To Get The Attention Of Bluesfest Organisers: Bring It Live

“I can tell from live clips how good a live band is, you’ve don’t always get to be in the same place on the same night.”

“I haven’t seen the Pierce Brothers live but I can see how they’re developing.”

“I was reading our forum on Bluesfest and on our bulletin board somebody put up an artist there the other day who blew me away. He’s from West Australia, I just went ‘this guy is amazing’ – his name is Mitchell Cullen, that guy can play a guitar like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Other artists who get me excited are people like like Kim Churchill who have been working overseas. Kim won our buskers competition six years ago – that’s how he got going, but I watched a video of his show over the weekend of him playing in Paris and you just go ‘man you’ve gust got that professional stage stuff going now’. He’s developed.

“He’s coming home to Bluesfest as an artist who is ready to take his position on a main stage in the afternoon where he’s going to blow people away. We go ‘we found you’ (laughs).

“Hussy Hicks is another, I saw them do a show at Australian Music Week and they were doing shows in Cronulla and I couldn’t believe how good they’ve gotten. Because they’ve gone overseas and lived there for a year or two and developed.”

Why Kendrick’s To Pimp A Butterfly Was The Best Record In A Decade

“[To Pimp A Butterfly] was he best thing I heard since my daughter bought home Eminem all those years, and yep I’m in my 60s, but I know good music when I hear it – I know great music when I hear it.”

“I jumped on it, it was one of those weird things – I fell asleep on the on a plane and it was on repeat so I think I heard it like 6-8 times before I woke up and was like ‘whoa’ I’ve gotta hear it again! (laughs). I was so sold on it, I got in the promoter’s ear (who was touring him) and the festival in Auckland who is putting him on and said ‘come on, let’s just do this!’”

“You’ve got ears or you don’t – that to me was one of the the best records I’ve heard in at least a decade, and certainly in an area of rap which I think lost its way.

“I’m not saying Drake ain’t great and I love Kanye West, I think he should be President! But there’s been real issues with misogyny and aspects of violence and for somebody [Kendrick] to come out with a record like that shows the way forward and includes great musicians of the day, like Kamasi Washington, Robert Glasper and that includes avant-garde jazz and has a nod to the past in Clinton and Ronald Isley is mind-blowing.

“I love Kanye West, I think he should be President!”

“Like every now and again a great piece of art occurs and it doesn’t matter what area it’s in. It could be country music but if you really love music you’ve gotta be on it enough to hear that and that’s what’s going on with Kendrick, he has revolutionised an art form known as rap. I mean it’s that simple.

“It’s challenging intellectually, the music is great, but there’s always going to be people who don’t like it because it’s rap, which is often seen as being a form of music that doesn’t have a whole lot of redeeming values, but you know if you say you love ‘black music’ but you don’t listen to what’s happening in all forms of it then you’re missing out on a lot.”

The Magic Formula For Festival Longevity

“There’s lots of destination festivals that are multi-day festivals that are doing great like Splendour, Falls, Woodford, Port Fairy Folk sold out, I think.

“They’ve all got the same story – it involves a journey to go to them, they’re multi-day events, a majority of them are on their own site, which means they’ve developed those sites so that the experience is a good one for their customisers and they’re not loading in to a major sports or show ground on short notice which means they can’t set up the site a certain way.

[include_post id=”442444”]The struggles with single day metro based festivals is they’re probably not allowed to have all those amazing stalls that all those good festivals have, and the food have to sell hot dogs and chips because that’s all they could get their licence to do because they mainly do sporting events, it also affects the liquor you sell.

“Unless they get a lot of people, they’ve only got one income stream and if that falls back a little they’re in trouble. At events like Bluesfest we have our own camping areas and we have liquor licences and people pay to have the food and craft stalls at Bluesfest and there’s multiple income streams and I think that is a big difference.”

Plans For 2017 & Beyond

“We have artists on offer for the 2017 festival already. We’ve probably got about 6-10 on offer. Because people go ‘we can’t play your festival next year – but we really want to the year after’ and that’s just how it is.

I guess as our industry seems to be tightening up a little, I guess that’s going to happen more. This month I’m going to be overseas listening for new acts again for the following year even though Bluesfest is in March, you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta discover them.”

Bluesfest 2016

Thursday, 24th March – Monday, 28th March 2016
Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm, Byron Bay NSW
Tickets: Byron Bay Bluesfest

Photo credit: The Northern Star

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