KEY POINTS:
While tens of thousands of Coromandel holidaymakers were sensibly taking full seaside advantage of a glorious Easter Saturday, several thousand others were basking in the blues at the first Bluesfest NZ, staged near Whitianga.
Well, basking in the music at least - the festival title rather misrepresented the
broad artist line-up, which also encompassed roots, R&B, indie rock, alt-country, soul and more.
The Australians may well be continuing to steal our musical things, but in return they have over the years at least been providing NZ audiences with new festival opportunities.
Bluesfest NZ is an extension of the Byron Bay Bluesfest circuit which includes like-minded events in Victoria (Point Nepean), Tasmania (Southern Roots) and the original Byron Bay Blues and Roots Festival in NSW.
Whitianga certainly seems an unlikely venue for any large-scale festival of this kind, but with so many people holidaying in the region and a local audience otherwise starved of international live music it does makes sense.
More importantly perhaps, the local district council and general community are evidently supportive.
I enjoyed some excellent mussel fritters prepared by the Mercury Bay Area School fundraising team. The Dakota Fields site is on flat land, close by the Whitianga aerodrome and conveniently just a few minutes off SH25.
Irrigation ditches provide natural barriers between festival areas, reinforced with the odd live electric fence as some were to discover.
While the Byron Bay festival, now in its 19th year, runs over five stages and five days of the Easter break, Bluesfest NZ was an afternoon/evening affair with two stages.
The half hour spent in a queue on the wrong side of the Kopu Bridge determined that I would miss Herbs Unplugged, the main stage opening act.
Midge Marsden, Little Bushman and Hollie Smith followed as the crowd slowly built and staked positions.
An R18 but 'family friendly' event, it was the sort of festival where you could pitch your shade tent or beach umbrella, certainly your picnic blanket and camping chairs, in clear view of mainstage.
Some of the cars in one carpark had an excellent view of the second stage.
Jandals and sunhats were the common denominator among the wide ranging audience of music lovers, parents, grandparents, tourists and locals on a sweltering afternoon.
Perhaps because it was so hot, none of the mainstage acts seemed intent on scorching up the stage and it wasn't until Australian one-man tour de force Xavier Rudd ushered in the evening that the party seriously started.
The much smaller second (Mercury Stage) was well warmed up with different shades of blues from Kokomo, The Checks, Pluto and Darcy Perry Band before soloists Paul Ubana Jones and Newton Faulkner set the scene for the full moonlit evening.
Slow to get started and squeezed into the stage, popular American alt-country/rock act Wilco closed it out in considerable style.
The main stage finished strongly, if a bit erratically, with Mississippi blues man Keb' Mo', multi-Brit Award winner Scottish singer KT Tunstall, Ian Brown (Stone Roses) and legendary American blues and (at the end) rock guitarist Buddy Guy playing out to the midnight finish.
Not quite a sell-out success, nor quite a festival of the blues, the first Bluesfest NZ was nonetheless an excellent festival in a great environment and will hopefully return with some fine-tuning same time next year.
