A lovely musical surprise.

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In Australia, around March/April/May, there are a few Blues Music festivals. One of the most well-known on the East Coast is the Byron Bay Blues fest. Many international musicians come to Aus for this. However, it is really expensive to attend, far too expensive for me. The upside of this though, is that those acts generally use the time to do a quick tour of Australia at the same time. We drove 3 hours to see the Tedeschi-Trucks band perform in Melbourne, which was lovely, even if the venue was extemely over-booked and poor Ms Tedeschi had lost her voice. However, even better, was the fact that Jason Isbell was perforning in a rural city, Bendigo, only 2 and 1/2 hours drive for us. We booked our tickets, and accomodation, and off we went. After a very average meal at a pub, we walked to the Ulumbarra Theatre for the performance. What a wonderful surprise. The theatre was an old Gaol, that had been very cleverly turned into a Performing Arts Centre, but with many of the jail parts still intact. The ticket office was an old cell, and there were still cells with the bars on the doors as we walked down the foyer. The outside,too, still had the high prison walls topped with barbed-wire. Beautiful. The picture above shows the blending of old and new; the red carpet and a seat, against the prison walls. The next surprise was even greater. The gig was advertised as Jason Isbell only, but in fact Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, the whole band took to the stage. Oh, my husband and I were in heaven. He played some old favourites and some new work too. The acoustics in the theatre were wonderful, and it would be one of the best performances I have ever seen. If you don't know of Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, you can listen below. Brilliant!