Another Notodden Blues Festival is over, and this was my 25th anniversary at the festival – easily on my top three list of all of them. The weather was excellent, many tickets sold, the bands and artists were great and I got to meet good friends and acquaintances. What more can you ask for? (Photo above: Steven van Zandt and the Mostar School of Rock.

The festival had a bad year economically last year, and they couldn’t get another year like that without a serious danger if having to shut down. In that perspective it was a great pleasure to see that they had succeeded in many of the changes they instigated this year, and that the result was a much better result. The Notodden Blues Festival is an important festival for the blues and blues related music – not only for Norway, but actually worldwide, too. So now we can look forward to a new festival next year, too.

Here are my photos of the bands I saw and some of the activities at the festival this year.

Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul

Dumdum Boys

Supersonic Blues Machine with Billy Gibbons, Eric Gale and Joe Louis Walker

Billy Gibbons

Eric Gale

Joe Louis Walker

Rival Sons

Bigbang

Larkin Poe

Walter Trout

Ulf Lundell

The Norwegian Blues Adventure

 Amund Maarud

The Fabulous T-birds

Reidar Larsen with friends

Come Taste The Band with Joe Lynn Turner

The grand opening of the festival

 Tor Einar “Dr.” Bekken, the winner of the Blues Prize 2019

The Bluestown Outlaws

RAUS

Little Steven’s Blues School

All photos are © Per Ole Hagen and must not be used without written permission.