West Coast Blues and Roots festival

So the West Coast Blues and Roots festival was last weekend (March 31 - April 1) and even though there was no Dave *cries*, we still had a good time! We did however get a refund for our weekend tickets (Dave was the main reason we were going on Saturday) and then bought Sunday only tickets. Friend's who went for the whole weekend said they had a great time on Saturday too.

It's the WA version of the East Coast festival and it took place in Fremantle on the esplanade. You can read/see more about the event at the 'official' Sunset Events site.

I was mainly interested in seeing Missy Higgins, John Mayer and Ben Harper...

...so of course see them we did! *grin*

My husband Sander has only recently become a fan of John Mayer, his music being introduced to us by friends, and he's been listening to him quite a bit over the last few months. Before the festival I hadn't heard that much of John's music but had liked the stuff I had. I'm another convert now, he was excellent!

I was really looking forward to seeing Missy live, as her album 'The Sound of White' is one of my favourites. I was very impressed, her voice sounded fantastic. Ben Harper was also great...he was the headliner act and therefore played for approx 2 hours. Again, I hadn't seen him live before either but he did not disappoint!

Someone I'd hardly even heard of before was Ben Kweller and, apart from his dodgy fashion choices (tight denim and red flannelette!?!), he was also very good.

There was obviously other artists playing and I'd say that most of what we heard/saw was pretty good - some were just more to our tastes than others and some we may have given more of a chance than others (Amos Lee sounded pretty good but I admittedly wasn't paying as much attention as he probably deserved).

I also spent some time collecting cans around the festival as part of a 'green initiative' which enabled you to earn 'green dollars' for every bag of cans you took to the recycling stand. They were surprisingly not very big bags and you got 5 'green dollars' per bag. I made 35 green dollars all up and therefore only paid $5 (real Australian money) for a groovy John Mayer tee (admittedly the John Mayer tee was not my first choice - I wanted an actual 'Blues and Roots' shirt but they were all sold out). It was pretty easy work and didn't really interfere with my festival experience. People were also pretty helpful by approaching me with cans and a couple (of strangers, as well as my hubby and friends!) even helped collect them! I had fun, helped out and earned 'money'.

It was a long but fun day hanging out with our friends and listening to some very talented musicians. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday really.

...Did anyone else attend? Did you enjoy the day/weekend? I'd love to hear some more stories or see some other photos. I'll probably also have some short videos uploaded to youtube later as well if anyone is interested.

[This post was mostly copy-pasted from my personal vox and just changed a little for the community]