I Got the Blues - the Notodden Blues

The Notodden Blues Festival was this weekend, over on the east side of Norway. I had bought my "Brygga" ticket months ago, and reserved a room in a Best Western 45 minutes away by bus - the closest place I could get! This is the country's biggest Blues festival. This year's big names were Van Morrison and Eric Burdon and the Animals. Wait, do they play blues? Maybe a little. Lots of lesser known bands did play blues, though. How about Tedeschi Trucks Band? Or Mud Morganfield, son of Muddy Waters?

Notodden is small, and has a total of one hotel. Most of the thousands of people were camping out. All over the place, in parking lots and beside the roads, as well as in the soccer stadium and official campsites. It struck me that they were there for socializing as much as or more than the music. When I was in high school, I went to the football games only to see who else had gone to the football game. What game? I got that impression here.

Here are the musicians that I saw, and many of the links are to them playing on YouTube:

Rita Engedalen and Margit Bakken, Damer i Blues (the Women in Blues)

Rolf Raddis Band, who were good, and quite loud

Trond Ytterbø and Bent Bredesen

The 9Fingers Band played in the Union Blues Cup. They were wearing Blues Brothers clothes and had grown out their sideburns. They had awesome harmonica and blues sound. They didn't win. :-( I saw a couple of them at the Mud Morganfield show, and tapped them on the shoulders. I raved at them about how great they were. They gave me hugs and told me that I had really made the day for them. I am so glad that I got to talk to them. By the way, the lead/harmonica player really did have 9 fingers! 

Steinar Albrigtsen, Monika Nordli & Orbo are solo artists that played together. My notes at this point say that I wore earplugs for the "rock" bands. The festival even gave away earplugs while we waited in line!

My Brygga ticket got me into the biggest venue, Brygga, both Friday and Saturday. Friday was when I saw the attitude about ignoring the artist. The James Hunter Six from someplace English-speaking was treated very rudely. I bought their album, since I thought their music was good. They were the warm-up band for Van Morrison. He got much better treatment. He brought James Hunter back on stage to play harmonica in Gloria and in Help Me Baby, I Can't Do It By Myself. I was disappointed that each concert only lasted one hour.

Saturday morning, there was lightning and thunder and hard rain. The weather forecast was for that to last all day! Scary. The picture above is from the first Brygga concert Saturday afternoon. Ida Jenshus was first. The music was pretty good, but the sound system disintegrated. Her microphone stopped working in the middle of a song. She had to move over to another one.  

The next performer was Eric Burdon and the Animals. He was a fun performer. He said he had not played this early in the day since he was 15.

Last Brygga concert was the Tedeschi Trucks Band, who has won a grammy for their debut album, Revelator. I liked their music, and bought Revelator. And the sun came out. Amazing!

I bought a baked potato for dinner and sat with a couple of men from the university in Oslo. They each complained that the other one snored. They each said that their own snoring was no problem, since they were asleep! They really thought my hotel idea was great. They were in the soccer stadium. They had communal showers, and breakfast to be bought, and all you can eat fish soup at midnight at the church. We talked about what show to do after dinner, and I decided to buy a ticket for Hovigs Hanger.

I went to see Mud Morganfield. He was awesome! I was cheering, right up front. He says he is making sure that people that never got to see his dad, Muddy Waters, didn't miss out. He had a fantastic harmonica player, Steve Weston. After his hour, he signed autographs on his album and let you take pictures with him. What a sweetheart. 

Me, my harmonica, and Mud Morganfield

The last artist I saw was John Mayall, Godfather of European Blues. I was standing in the back for his show and couldn't really see him. He played harmonica, so he was a winner in my Blues ranking.

There's an hourly bus between Notodden and Kongsberg, where my hotel was, 24 hours a day. They even added a bus after the big shows. There's a train from Kongsberg north to the train line between Oslo and Bergen. The trip to Bergen is well known for its beauty, and I enjoyed it.