‘Are you coming back next year?’, is the question everyone asks. I won’t be but many are and even buy their ticket for the pre-early bird price on the final day. It was my shopping day in Byron Bay town to get bottles of my favourite local hot sauce. Lunch at the hard to find vegetarian restaurant, it’s tiny and tucked away down a little alleyway. Brunswick Heads is one place the local people talk about, ‘better than Byron’, and I wanted to catch a bus there but I had a date with Samantha Fish on stage at 3pm. She was worth it too; a fab blondy hair style, a SG Gibson like mine but white, and a voice – she totally owns it. Julia Stone next, an Australian, was once part of a duo with her brother, but it didn’t grab me. Lukas Nelson again, and so good, he played Paul Simon’s Diamonds On The Soles Of His Shoes, really well. The big sing-along is the song he wrote with Lady Gaga with a killer hook I can’t get out of my head, ‘I hope you find yourself before I find somebody else to love’ – so catchy, and kind of corny too I guess. Caught a few songs of David Gray, Paul Kelly, and Jack White’s Sabateurs band – what a noise, basically a guitar constantly feeding-back – but for those that like their rock loud and grungy – he’s your man.
