Apollo Bay Music Festival

A quick entry about the Apollo Bay music Festival. We took a week off to go to Apollo Bay for SWMBO’s significant birthday including the music festival on the weekend.

We have been to the festival about 6 times in the last 10 years and we like the location and the diversity of acts: folk, jazz, classical, big names, blues etc. It runs from 4 pm Friday through to 6pm Sunday with about 10 parallel sessions. Performances are held in venues round town, pubs, surf club bowls club, church, mechanics institute and some big tents erected for the show. If you had the stamina you could take in 30 hours of music and about the same number of bands.
It rained a bit but was not cold and the ambience was lively and relaxed. Street stalls selling take away, buskers, face painting and the nearby sound of surf added to the ambience.

KAssey Chambers was the headline act but we skipped her and we saw The Bastard Children (very loud gutsy folk/gypsy blues originals:excellent in the pub), The Big Low (Tom Waits meets Kurt Vile in the Tasmanian Wilderness playing the saw: any band with a saw gets our vote), Celtic Storm (more like Celtic light showers but they did have a good piper), Clair Jenkins avec Band(a Quebecois lady channelling Edith Piaff and Dolores O'Riordan from the Cranberries: nice but a bit boring), Djan Djan (folk super group with Mamadou Diabte on Cora, Jeff Lang on Guitar and Bobby Singh on Tabla: loved it), Four Play (string quartet does Leonard Cohen, rock, original classic compositions, and jazz: They were stunning. Best Rendition of ACDC’s Back in Black ever), Lee Rosser (local blues/roots guy with big voice), Kerri Simpson (straight Memphis blues: solid), Rory Ellis (acoustic blues with an Australian twist), Rhys Crimmin (young blues guy with loads of talent:watch out for him), Tijuana Cartel (Santana goes techno in Iraq: due to sound problems their PC didn’t play the techno bits and instead we had to put up with a brilliant Latin acoustic guitar set: fine by me. They should lose the techno) and The Wilson Pickers (blue grass with attitude: any band with banjo is fine).

We finished with Melbourne based The Band Who Knew Too Much, a favourite of ours for many years. They play at pubs around town and sometimes busk at Vic Market. We saw them in the pub at 4 pm. The room was jam packed standing room only and the audience knew their songs. It went off. Haven’t seen such a high energy show for years. We seem to have seen quite a few bands in the pub (most have been something to do with the excellent local brewed Otway Estate Prickly Moses pale ale).