Nelson Jazz and Blues Festival 2008

At 4am on January 1st, 2009, Brilleaux loaded up the van, and left Tauranga for Nelson, where they were set to play six gigs in five days at the Woolaston Jazz and Blues Festival.

We arrived without incident in Nelson in timefor the festival briefing at 7.30pm, where we meet up with Rowena - the organiser,Neville Claughton (Mr Music) who was helping us out with a bit of PA gear, and all the other artists.

On the ferry I was desperate for a bit of sleep, due to the ungodly departure time, but I still managed to hear a fantastic band, who were paying their passage by playing music. The band was Wellington Heads, and they were fantastic. Great original material that is humorous and entertaining, and played with great skill and passion, and if you ever get the chance to see these guys, I recommend that you do. Whats more, they just happen to be friends with Demian, who often plays with them I am told!

Anyway, our first gig in Nelson was at the opening show in the park. It had been threatening to rain all day, but had hel off, and was still fine when we took to the stage directly after another amazing 3-piece outfit called Hot Club Sandwich, who were my highlight of the festival.

We played a punchy 45 minute set to a crowd of about 7000 people, who didn't know what had hit them!

One report said that we "exploded" onto the stage and hit them on the nose.

From the stage, all we could see was a huge sea of people dancing, which was very satisfying.

When our set was up, we were called up for two encores by the compere as the crowd didn't want us to go! This gave us a HUGE buzz, and made us the talk of the festival for the next five days, as well as having people coming to see us based upon that first performance. Very exciting.

All in all we had a fantastic festival, and sold about $1800 worth of albums to a very enthusiastic crowd.

We also made a bunch of new friends, and caught up with some old ones.

We saw the show by Midge Marsden, Liam O Ryan, and Chet O Connell which was held in the beautiful looking, but horrible sounding old School of Music building, and we also went out to the Beautiful looking and beautiful sounding Woollaston Estate Winery to watch Grant Winterburn and Shaken Not Stirred.

Speaking of the Woollaston Winery, which happens to be the major sponsor of the event, I must mention the delicious wines they make - especially the pinot noir and the pinot gris that we all fell in love with.

This festival is without doubt, the best organised, best paying, friendliest festival, in one of the loveliest, sunniest cities in New Zealand that we have attended so far, and if anybody is looking for something to do in the first week of January next year, then I recommend spending a week down in Nelson. The food, Wine, climate shopping and entertainment was all first class.

I must also mention that at this time of year, the locally grown cherries were at markets and stalls around the place, and whilst at this festival, I made a glutton of myself on the best cherries I have ever had.

I love Nelson!