bluesfest adventures

Since I met so many new friends who don't understand dutch, I will write this amazing story in English.

It all began in Byron Bay. We arrived at 9 am after a 13 hour busdrive from Sydney during which my jar of tahini decided to open itself and spread in my bag. Something you can't handle after hardly sleeping at all. After the cleaning up, we headed to the information center to look for a place to spend the night. Everything was bloody expensive and the pouring rain didn't help either to try to love the place. But the woman helped us out and added: oh Bob Dylan is playing by the way. WHAT! There was this festival going on 10 km out of Byron, from thursday to tuesday, completely sold out, apart from some tickets for tuesday, one of the days Bob would play. Although expensive it was, we decided we couldn't miss out on that icon so we bought tickets. We'd have to stay in or around Byron for 7 days, but not in the center because, as I mentioned, it was unaffordable. After checking the farmer's market on thursday and unsuccessfully looking for a wwoofingplace in the area, we hitched to Mullumbimby, a cute little town where we found a rather cheap campsite.

This is the best part of the story. Darren and Damon picked us up. They're friends from both sides of Australia (Darwin and Melbourne) who met on Bluesfest last year and decided to come together again. We talked about the amazing line-up and how we wish we could go the other days as well. Lucky as we were they were volunteering at the festival and decided to take us with them to the vollie headquarter and get us in as vollies as well. It was boiling hot that day and we waited and waited and waited. The first person we asked told us to come back at 5 pm, but probably we wouldn't be needed. So we tried again. The second person told us to come back everyday at 12 pm in case people don't turn up for their shift. We didn't have much hope left at that point, but Darren pointed us at one of the vollie coordinators. And we will be grateful for that for the rest of our lives! Suddenly it was ok, we would just have to wait for a bit and then sign on and get in. All our stuff was still in Darren's van and we had to get to the campsite to pitch our tent and Xavier Rudd was playing that night and we were just waiting and waiting and waiting. So we asked Zoe, the coordinator, if it would still be long. So she pointed us to Georgie, red team-leader. Apparently we needed a $100 bon and we had to be back within an hour to be able to get the afternoon shift and see Xavier Rudd. Our lovely new friends Darren and Damon gave us a ride to Mullumbimby to get the bon, pitch our tent in a record time and drive back to the festival. We were just too late to get the afternoon shift, but we did get our wristband and we could enjoy a free day at Bluesfest. Aaaand we got to see Xavier Rudd!
Our first shift started at 7 pm and after waiting 2,5 hours until someone told us what to do, we got to do buses. This means: standing outside where the shuttle buses come and in case someone asks you where the bus goes, point them the right direction. Luckly half our shift was already over and at midnight, when it got really busy, we could just jump on the bus ourselves and go to our tent.

So that was the story about how we got to go free to Bluesfest. We were team red 1 and we were the 'floaters'. Friday, we had to go with Werner 'Verrrnerrr se gerrrrman'. Each of us got a corner of a street and we had to wait for people to ask where 3 days camping was. Because no one really asked me anything, I decided to cross the street and help David out. We ended up juggling water bottles and talk for 4 hours, until Werner brought new vollies and we could enjoy the free festival and free food. Easily earned.
On saturday we got to do dishes backstage. That was pretty exciting, first of all: I had never been backstage on a festival, second of all, we finally got to do something! Like really working, not just standing around. I finally felt like I deserved being there. I didn't see anyone famous backstage, but I bet I washed Micheal Franti's plate! The kitchen closed an hour before our shift ended so we got to see a bit of Micheal Franti and Spearhead. It's one of those bands I don't really listen to, but that I just want to see live!
After another really short night, we had the early shift during which we got to do carpark. I first had to direct people into the space where they could park. Someone stopped and asked if they couldn't just park randomly. When I asked him friendly to just go where I was pointing he told me to fuck off and he just parked. I was too staggered to do something. After that, my new friend Lucy (cutie girl) and I got to direct people past the staff and vollie parking and make sure they wouldn't get in and get the good spots. That was funny. I brought my Ipod so we were just dancing around and it amazed me how many people dance back in their car! It was pretty fun. Even the people who didn't do what we told them to, were rather funny. There was this woman going on about her sick child at home and that she had to park there so she could get out easily, we didn't understand what it was like to have children, children go before anything else! So Lucy replied: yeah sure, children go before going to a festival. And she walked away. Amazing girl she is indeed!
Monday was the big day. We would see Bob Dylan! We got to do dishes backstage again, and chop veggies and prawns. Bob is a vegetarian. So the prawns weren't for him. Being backstage revealed some secrets for us about the big man that we probably wouldn't want to have known. Such as: he didn't let anyone backstage, everything was surrounded by security. He wouldn't even allow cameramen on stage so they turned off the screens so that no one could actually see him play unless you were right in the front. So it wasn't the best gig ever. Of course it was amazing to see (or rather hear) him play live, and I know a lot of you would be really jealous. But I can tell: don't pay too much money for him because he just doesn't like it! I heard he's always been like that.. So I wonder why he actually keeps on playing?

I'm running out of time here so I'll just list up the bands that were really good:
- Rodrigo y Gabriella: amazing guitarplaying going on there, unbelievable!
- Michelle Shocked: she is just awesome, I love her!
- Blind Boys of Alabama: performance like you've never seen it before
- Gurrumul: blind aboriginal with such beautiful songs
- Xavier Rudd: good as always, pretty cool to see him in his own country
- Grace Jones: what a show! and the ultimate challenge for people who try to do photography

and lots lots more but that is for the next time!

cheers and thank you all for the past 7 days, it's been amazing!