Blues on Broadbeach is celebrating 25 years on the Gold Coast this week, with the Teskey Brothers topping a lineup that mixes national names, local favourites and the kind of soul music that has long sounded unlikely beside the city’s beaches. Ash Grunwald is supporting the brothers, while Ruthie Foster and Robert Finley also feature in a bill designed to fill the coastal precinct with music from Thursday through Sunday.
The festival has grown far beyond its early days. Hundreds of thousands of punters have turned up in recent years for an event that pairs blues music with the Gold Coast’s sunshine, and that contrast is part of what has kept Blues on Broadbeach going for a quarter of a century.
For Matthew Brown, the anniversary lands close to home. He has been playing Blues on Broady with one band or another for 17 years, and this year he is back with Mr Brown & his Vintage Vibration, which will play Saturday night at BOB on Surf Parade. Brown is the son of hinterland legend Stan Brown, who co-founded the old Woodchoppers in Mudgeeraba, and he said the festival’s curators, Mark Duckworth and Zac Fahey, had again put together a strong bill.
“Duck and Zac have a great reputation for putting together a top lineup; they are all about supporting local festival ambassadors, like our characters from Alpha Stomp. I love this festival and it’s great to be coming home after being on the road either side of Blues on Broady,” Brown said. He also described Alpha Stomp as a “traditional Muddy Waters, Chicago blues outfit.”
That makes Sunday one to watch. Alpha Stomp, which has built up its fan base over the past five years, will take the main stage as part of a festival that has become as much a showcase for local acts as for bigger Australian and international performers. Brown’s group is part of that local thread, while Louie Shelton brings a very different kind of history to the same event.
Shelton will perform and tell stories exclusively for the Twelve Bar Society, drawing on a career that includes writing guitar riffs for the Jackson Five, Neil Diamond, Lionel Richie and the Monkees. He was later inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville, a reminder that Blues on Broadbeach has always worked best when it places homegrown players alongside names with global reach.
The festival began 25 years ago and has stayed true to a simple formula: take blues off the record and onto the street, then let the setting do the rest. On the Gold Coast, where sunshine and beaches usually dominate the image, that mix still feels unusual. Yet the crowds keep coming, and the lineup keeps widening, which is why the 25th edition looks less like a nostalgia act than a festival that has learned how to last.
What happens next is straightforward. The music rolls through the weekend, Alpha Stomp gets its Sunday slot, Mr Brown & his Vintage Vibration takes Saturday night, and Blues on Broadbeach keeps doing what it has done for 25 years: turning the Gold Coast into a blues town, if only for a few days.
