Welcome to April's Sons of the Delta newsletter.

Greetings once again from sunny Brisbane, Australia. Mark is still chilling out (despite the heat!) and recently spent a very enjoyable day at the 18th Annual International East Coast Blues & Roots Festival at beautiful Byron Bay. He would like to have spent the whole weekend there but tickets went faster than a kangaroo on steroids. A great mix of music was played across the four stages including blues, country, zydeco, jazz and folk. The festival also shrewdly puts on some well-known mainstream acts that have a roots leaning. Mark went on the Friday and was blown away by Hat Fitz and Itchy. Hat's stage presence was very intense - almost menacing - and the show was hypnotic from start to finish. Other acts of note were the Hacienda Brothers, the Fumes (a local two-piece in the Black Keys vein), Terrance Simien and of course Australia's premier bluesman Mojo Webb. A crowd favourite was the guest appearance of Jack Johnson with the Animal Liberation Orchestra. Jack has a house in Byron so I expect he just fancied a bit of a jam while he was in town. Don't we all? Here's a website with some great photos from the Festival.

Another few blues jam's in Brisbane have been and gone and, as promised, we've uploaded a photo of Mark playing at the recent monthly Jubilee Hotel jam organised by the Blues Association of South East Queensland. Click here to load the photo or click here to see it in our photo gallery. In front, from left to right, are Mark Doherty on harp (presenter of 'Nothing But the Blues' radio show on 4zzz and host of the Satchmos Monday night blues jam), Mark on guitar and vocals and Grant on bass. Hidden at the back are Roger on guitar and Trevor on drums. One of the regulars there who we mentioned last time is the guitarist Harvey. In a recent conversation with him Mark discovered that before he came to Australia he used to be the guitarist with Dana Gilespie and when he emigrated he was replaced by Matt Schofield. Harvey is in at least three bands here and keeps very busy!

And now to Rick... As some of you may know, Rick recently moved to Northampton. Something you may not know is that Northampton is one of the UK's premier locations for UFO sightings. Recently, several eye-witnesses reported seeing lights in the sky over the Malt Shovel, a well known real-ale house and blues venue. One witness said that at closing time the lights descended at the back of the building and a tall, slender, dark haired man who was mumbling something about Starbucks coffee was suddenly enveloped in a green misty beam, sparkled for a moment then levitated upwards into the lights, which then shot away at high speed. The date of this incident coincides with the last day Mark heard anything from Rick which begs the question... WAS THAT MAN RICK??? If there's anyone who can shed any light on this please email us! We can only hope that this hasn't happened.... But hold on - we have breaking news! Just hours ago Mark heard from Rick and he's alive and well. He says "rumours of my abduction are greatly exaggerated". What a relief!

Stay happy and healthy!

Thanks,