The Once Overs opened up festivities, blasting their energetic noise across the tunnel to the thin crowd whom occupied the back lounges. We were only some wine and cheese short of being a book club, and the lead singer at one stage admitted to feeling like he was in an audition for some kind of flash dance school.

The four piece soldiered on with bass and guitar collaboration that was remnant of the full throttle grooves that The Cops delivered some time ago. The singing was intense, delivered fast in a Retro rock vocal tone like that of Steven Tyler, even with glimpses of scatting. I was finding it impossible to salvage a word in some songs, until the lead singer verified, “that song had no lyrics, just vowels and consonants”. The drummer provided some nice back up vocal support while still maintaining his high tempo straight punk rhythms.

About mid-set a mellow key tone was born in the midst of the fury, and the tempo slowed for a moment, a dynamic shift that was soothing. However, the lead singer did not prove himself to be musically ambidextrous. If he was playing keys then there were no vocals, and if he was singing there was no tambourine, it was all one layer at a time.

Next up were blues rock heroes The Vasco Era. Lead singer Sid claimed to know three quarters of the audience. The three piece, with friend Joe Cope helping out on keys, opened up the ledger with a a cover of The Beatles’ Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?. The Vasco Era offered such gigantic walls of sound, making me wonder why I didn’t find myself frolicking around in them more often.

Their texture is a lot like an on and off button, you have soft and loud, but nothing in between. When the O’Neil brothers pull the trigger, one wouldn’t want to be within four arm spans of Ted’s axe wielding bass antics or Sid’s deafening scream. Sid’s ability to tear up his throat and then still maintain a crisp vocal tone afterward is definitely part of his appeal. On top of that these boys are naturally charismatic. After shredding his distorted slide guitar to a squeaking exhaustion, Sid looked up admitting “that sounds ridiculous” – to which Lawrence Greenwood of Whitley raised his can from further back in the audience. Numerous times also Sid whipped out the Johnny Cash guitar shotgun.

A useful piece of information for avid listeners was the date March 12, significant for the fact that their forthcoming release Lucille will be available. The Vasco Era finished up with a crowd favorite Honey Bee (or When It Was Making Weird Love Songs), in which Sid was left wailing and had to be physically removed from the stage by Ted and drummer Michael Fitzgerald.

Black Joe Lewis flew in from the US to steal the show, playing to an excitable crowd. Upon first glance Black Joe Lewis could be mistaken for Andre 3000 holding a telecaster. Behind him was a seven-piece backing, consisting of two horns, two guitars, a bass, organ and drums. There would also normally be Derek on the trumpet, but Black Joe Lewis informed the audience that he had a “case of the number twos”, and would not be performing tonight.

It was as if Black Joe Lewis was the cool kid in school that gathered a few white nerds and even one of their dad’s along for this band ride. His band was made up of white folk, formally dressed and wearing thick black-rimmed glasses. Whether they were all prescribed lenses remains a mystery. For the next hour and a half the swinging audience was put in to action by such songs as Booty City, which seemed fittingly named for the front row.

The songs were rhythmic gems, often with a blues funk sensibility and accompanied by a voice educated on soul. The Organist was just as competent when playing his Roland VK-7 backwards, from the opposite side of his seat. Black Joe Lewis performed one song about a 67 year old American that proceeded to kill a Repo man who was attempting to take his car, claiming that it was “a good way to go down”. He also went on singing strike for quite some time until an audience member brought him beer. He claimed that it was imperative for the function of his voice. Several jugs were paraded to the front of the stage. The tracks that are available for listening on his Myspace will not do his live show justice, which was squeezed for an encore when he finished four minutes before schedule.

I ducked out to the kitchen for one last coffee before Whitley got on stage at 1am and wondered should I have grabbed a double shot for Lawrence Greenwood while I was there. Realising that it was quite late, Greenwood had his own solution for the fatigue – to play very loudly.

After a long drone, and national geographic visuals of seals eating fish and whatnot, Whitley belted out the rolling chords of their new song Killer. I pictured the Greenwood I had first been introduced to some years ago, the man with nothing more than a paddle and an inherent ability to write resonating pop songs. Not much had changed, except it would seem some laptops and synths had fallen from the heavens to further authenticate his craft.

Moving in to this electro era and it would seem that not even the earthy signature of Whitley could ignore the perks. Greenwood has refined the use of this technology however to choir loops and other mellow tones that work solely to fatten up the texture of his tracks.

It is safe to say that he enjoys playing the songs off the Go Forth, Find Mammoth release a lot more than anything from debut record The Submarine. At the Falls Festival in Lorne he claimed that these new songs were off “a much better album than the previous one” and at the Espy he somewhat validated this statement, avoiding his older tracks like the plague. Head First Down was very well received, as was Let It Sing, which Greenwood described as a song about “letting go of little things”.

Not until very late in the set did the likes of More Than Life and I Remember grace the audience. Whitley finished the Deep Roots Festival with the eternal classic Lost In Time, introducing some ambient synth accompaniment in the beginning and some tempo changes in the ending, showing that Greenwood is constantly growing as a performer and writer, incorporating the new instrumentation in a bid to teach his old dogs some new tricks.