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.