Byron Bay Bluesfest

Australian Blues and Roots five day Music Festival

The east coast international Blues & Roots Music Festival, also known as Byron Bay Bluesfest, is an annual music festival held for five days over the Easter long weekend at Byron Bay, New South Wales. On five performance stages the festival features a large selection of blues music, world music, roots music, and a hybrid of those and other cultural styles performed by both international and Australian artist. Some of the national artist who have performed previously include John Butler Trio, Missy Higgins, Keith Urban, Paul Kelly, Gotye, Cat Empire and Blue King Brown while some of the international artist include Ben Harper, John Mayer, Michael Franti and David Gray. Bluesfest is an all ages family event, with female attendances in 2008 (54 per cent) being slightly greater than males (46 per cent), and approximately 28 to 30 per cent of its audience being local.

The increasing success of the festival has been recognised on an international scale. In 2008 Bluesfest Director Peter Noble, through his record label AIM, was the first ever Australian independent record label to win a Grammy Award (USA). Michael Chugg, Bluesfest’s co-Festival Director recently received the ‘Best Promoter in the World’ award at the recent European ILMC (International Live Music Conference), London.

2010 Byron Bay Bluesfest will be held from Thursday the 1st to Monday 5th April at their new venue Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm.

The festival began in 1990 as a four day indoor event at The Arts Factory in Byron Bay, drawing a capacity crowd of 6,000 people in its first year.

In 1993 the event moved outdoors to Belongil Fields (1993-1996), Red Devil Park (1997-2007) then back to Belongil Fields in 2008. After running four stages for some years, it ran five stages in 2008. On most days performances begin around noon and end at midnight. As of 2007, capacity at Red Devil Park was 16,000 attendees each day.

Last updated by Emma Rae (2009-10-20)