The third day of Blues Peer is also a nice mix of Belgian pride, older rock stars and of course blues.
Today’s program is like the weather on this first Pentecost day: the day started with heavy showers, but in the afternoon we sat in the grass with our sunglasses on.
The music on this third day also went in all directions, from the quiet listening music of Heather Nova to the real deal blues of Solomon Hicks and the folk punk of Levellers.
I mainly come for the blues bands, but I am very curious whether the Levellers still fan the flames in me like they did in the 90s at Torhout/Werchter and Pinkpop.
And can the men of Los Lobos get me dancing again, or am I too tired after two days, or has all the dance energy already disappeared from my body at Pokey LaFarge?
The day started just like last year with an acoustic set, this time by Guy Verlinde & Tom Eylenbosch.
Their album Promised Land Blues is a wonderful listening album, and listening is exactly what the audience did. It became a beautiful mix of their own songs and covers.
Highlight: the Bob Dylan cover “Blind Willie McTell”. Guy said that he has great admiration for both artists, and that this comes together completely in this song.
On the Uptown stage, an old Peer tradition came back to life.
For this 40th anniversary edition, a gospel choir was once again in full regalia: the G-Roots Gospel Choir. With the start of “When the Saints Go Marching In” the atmosphere was immediately good.
Did you want to swing so early? You could! What joy they radiated: nine male and female singers with a four-piece band. The choir blew away the rain — we had now had the last shower of the weekend.
The surprise of Peer 2025 for me was Bai Kamara Jr. & The Voodoo Sniffers. Bai Kamara has his roots in Sierra Leone, and you can hear that directly in the music.
Sometimes you hear wonderful blues, and suddenly the African tones fly around your ears. As Blues Peer itself says: “We like to bring the Afroblues to our festival, if only to put our predicate ‘eclectic festival’ in the spotlight.”
I had never seen GA-20 in this line-up before. During their concert in 2024 in TivoliVredenburg, it was musically strong, but there was no real band on stage yet.
How different it was now. Cody Nilsen and Matthew Stubbs sought each other out, took over solos from each other and clearly had fun. This is a band that knows how to get the audience involved.
In between all the guitar violence, there was also room for the Jimmy Reed grinder “I’ll Change That Too”.
Solomon Hicks played a nice set with several highlights. One of them was the guest harmonica player Walter Coolen, who was unknown to me.
Their version of “Help Me” was simply wonderful. Another highlight was the unique mix of “Crossroads” with the vocal line of “Every Day I Have the Blues” — I had never heard anything like it.
Together with “Polk Salad Annie” the thirty-minute performance contained a lot of covers. But half an hour was far too short for me. I will definitely follow him and hope to see him soon during a full concert.
DeWolff had the honor of replacing James Hunter, who unfortunately had to cancel. What a wonderful musical spectacle this remains.
From the start with “Night Train” to the twenty-minute “Rosita” the band went completely wild. And to think that they had to play in Raalte later that day!
Neither JD McPherson nor Heather Nova could hold my attention.
I just took some pictures and took my time eating in the fantastic food court that the festival has had in recent years.
What a wide range!
I thought I would be there in plenty of time for Ana Popovic, but thirty minutes before the start it was already difficult to get a good spot for photography.
Maybe these kinds of bands fit better on the main stage. Yesterday with Samantha Fish it was the same: many fans were standing outside the tent and could not fully experience the show. Popovic herself played fantastically.
How this woman keeps growing. As always she was stylishly dressed and her “bling bling” shoes stood out again. She effortlessly wrapped the audience around her finger and the songs from her latest album Power were a hit.
Levellers is completely different, but unlike Heather Nova, this band fits perfectly into the program of Blues Peer. Wonderful folk with punk influences.
Since I first saw the band at Pinkpop 1994, little has changed — both with the band and the audience. Exciting music and an audience that goes completely crazy.
And what a lot of instruments on stage: mandolin, violin and of course guitar. The highlight remains the use of the didgeridoo by Stephen Boakes in “One Way”. The band still plays many songs from their successful album Levelling the Land, but nobody cares.
What a party! Unfortunately I had to leave the tent early to get a good spot for photography at the last act in the Mississippi tent, Pokey LaFarge.
At Pokey you always leave smiling. What a nice mixture of early jazz, ragtime, rumba, swing and country blues.
It is difficult to stand still during songs like “Something in the Water” and “La La Blues”.
But he also knows how to convince with quiet songs like “Rotterdam”. One hour is actually too short — what a lot of happy people.
The closing act of the day and the festival was Los Lobos. For this American band with Mexican roots, this is the last tour in Europe. The band is calling it quits after fifty years and seventeen studio albums.
I have seen them several times, even before the “La Bamba” era, and always enjoyed multi-instrumentalist David Hidalgo and César Rosas.
The band had no less than three replacements for Hidalgo: Dwayne Verheyden, his cousin Geert Verheyden, and Jackie Greene, who had played with the band before.
Based on the review in the Volkskrant, I was really looking forward to it, but it was disappointing. It seemed as if the band didn’t feel like it. Bassist Conrad Lozano sat more than he stood, didn’t look into the audience, and when Geert Verheyden’s microphone didn’t work, no one was quick to jump in.
Musically it was all okay, and the Mexican songs like “Carabina 30-30” and “Soy Mexico Americano” put a smile on my face again, but I was clearly missing something.
After two tiring festival days I left earlier, but on the way to the car I could hear everything well.
I drove out of Peer with the sounds of “La Bamba”. Peer 2025 was again a nice mix of styles, with many bands that have a blues/roots edge.
Keep it up, on to the 50 editions! With such a program that should certainly work. See you next year!
