Midnight Oil to headline Bluesfest with new album Show of Hands
After being shut down by COVID-19 in March, the Byron Bay Bluesfest will return as a three-day event from October 1.
When Bluesfest was shut down on March 31 by the NSW government, just as tens of thousands of people were converging on Byron Bay for a highly anticipated long weekend of live music, festival director Peter Noble was blindsided by the shock decision.
Everything was in place for an Easter long weekend to remember at the Byron Events Farm, Tyagarah, with up to 16,500 ticket holders expected on site each day.
Instead, Noble’s dream of hosting the Australian live music industry’s first major multi-day event since the pandemic became a waking nightmare before a single note had been played.
NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard signed a public health order cancelling Bluesfest due to concerns that a highly infectious COVID variant was being transmitted in the local area, after one man tested positive to the virus.
This meant that 19,500 chairs, 72 lighting towers and 500 lanterns with 10km of wiring had to be packed up by some 2500 workers into hundreds of trucks. More than 500 campers had already checked in on site, while 79 hopeful stallholders had loaded in their wares for sale.
Millions of dollars evaporated into thin air that afternoon, not just within the festival grounds but in the entire regional economy, which stood to benefit greatly from the extra tourist activity.
“I have never been traumatised like that before,” Noble told The Australian. “I was f..ked for the first three or four weeks.”
Each subsequent day after the cancellation revealed no further instances of the single COVID case spreading within the Byron Shire and surrounds.
“It’s a tragedy,” said Noble. “I had to wake up one day and just go, ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re either going to be a leader or you’re going to be a loser. Make your choice.’”
His choice is clear: Bluesfest 2021 will return as a three-day event from October 1. As before, it will be a fully seated outdoor festival with an extensive COVID safety plan in place.
Midnight Oil has leapt to the top of the line-up as the opening night headline act, while the vast majority of the artist line-up has been retained. The Sydney rock band last played at the festival in 2001, and its upcoming performance will coincide with the release of the Oils’ 13th album.
“We’re delighted that we can play, headlining the Friday night, after all this time,” said drummer and songwriter Rob Hirst. “We will have a new album called Show of Hands. It’s a tough piece of work: anyone expecting the band to go off quietly into the night can forget about that.”
On March 31, Hirst was in Byron Bay and waiting to play the first of two concerts at Bluesfest with his band Backsliders when news of the cancellation came in.
“I just felt incredibly disappointed for everyone who had worked so hard and long to get one of the first festivals back in place,” he said. “You can imagine what a logistic nightmare it is to get something like that together, but I felt particularly sorry for all the crew and the bands that been looking forward to it as the one light on the hill. It was very cruel.”
Paul Kelly joins Midnight Oil as the other major new act announced at the top of the bill, alongside the two headliners from the cancelled event: Melbourne singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Tash Sultana will play last on Saturday night, while Jimmy Barnes will close the final night on Sunday.
Having weathered the trauma, Noble is still recovering but has vowed to press on.
“We’re back because I can’t afford not to move forward, on every level,” he said. “I can’t afford mentally not to do it. I have to be a part of what is, to me, an integral part of our society: our Australian music industry, and major events are a part of that.”
For the festival director and his team of 10 staff, work has scarcely paused across the past seven weeks.
Even with plans for the rescheduled event now well underway — with Noble again hopeful of getting NSW Health approval for at least 16,500 attendees on site per day — next year’s event isn’t too far away, either.
“We didn’t deserve what happened to us, and we’ll be working our way out of it for a long time,” he said. “The October event will be – hopefully – a successful return. But then six months later, we’ve got to do another Bluesfest [in April 2022], and it’s probably going to take us a year or two to put this behind us.”
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