Joanne Shaw Taylor.

Joanne Shaw Taylor.

Only a handful of musicians will play what most of us think of as blues at the Bluesfest in Byron Bay.

Among them will be Buddy Guy, James Cotton, Eric Bibb and Australia's C.W. Stoneking, but many more will show off some kind of hybrid blues: music deeply influenced by it and containing enough blues elements to keep the genre at the heart of the music.

Blues is laying your soul bare in front of anyone and saying 'I'm completely screwed up'. 

The music kept alive for the past half century by the likes of Guy (who, at 77, will play possibly his last Bluesfest next month), B.B. King, now 88, and the late John Lee Hooker is being propelled forward by a new generation, many of whom will be at Byron Bay alongside Guy.

Matthew Curry.

Matthew Curry.

These include blues-pop crossover superstar John Mayer, 36, Texas Blues guitarist Gary Clark jnr 30, singer-songwriter Beth Hart, 42, blues rocker Grace Potter, 31, and talented British guitarist Joanne Shaw Taylor, 28.

Putting Mayer's name in the same sentence as ''blues'' may irk some, but not Eric Bibb, a 62-year-old New York bluesman who has based himself in Europe since 1970.

''I hear the blues in John Mayer,'' Bibb says. ''He's a good example of someone who has ascended the pop ladder, but has still been able to bring along that real-deal blues language into his music.''

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. Photo: Phil Andelman

The blues came out of West Africa and was developed and spread by slaves in the American south in the late 19th century; forming the backbone of rock'n'roll, which then went on to dominate popular music for 50 years.

As Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards put it: ''If you don't know the blues … there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock'n'roll or any other form of popular music''.

Defining the blues has never been easy, but Bibb thinks hardship is integral: ''It's not just black Americans [during slavery] who were downtrodden and oppressed and having a hard time finding the strength to carry on. Every culture has stories like that. The lowest members of society across the international community can relate to it.

''[Blues] is about the things that really impact on our lives. Real stories still need to be sung about. You can make up all the bubblegum music you want, but in the end there is a need for people to keep hearing about what is really going on in their lives, their loves, the economy, the real world, even the weather. Natural disasters feature heavily in early blues.''

Guy, however, sees the blues as a kind of joyful escapism.

''I watch people's faces when I'm playing. If you've got a problem, I'll make you forget about it for a while,'' he says.

''Blues music puts a smile on people's faces and you have the hope of the whole world for the five minutes that song is playing. That's what the blues is about. It helps them forget all their troubles.''

Guy has been working with 14-year-old Massachusetts guitar prodigy Quinn Sullivan since the boy was eight and, although Sullivan is still too young to tour, one teenage blues phenomenon, Matthew Curry, of Illinois, will perform at Bluesfest.

Curry, 18, sees blues as a release: ''A lot of people say it's a good man feeling bad, but, for me, writing and playing and singing, it's a release. People think you play the blues because you're depressed. It's not that. It's the release of any type of emotion you have.''

Shaw Taylor thinks of the blues as a way of playing more than what is played. She says the connection between pre-war blues and modern blues, for instance, is the richness of the performance from the musician's connection to the music.

''For me, it's not just a genre, it's a particular way of approaching your instrument. You do it with a lot of personality and that's more important than playing a 12-bar shuffle.

''It's a means to really express yourself more than wanting to be technically the greatest guitar player. Maybe people relate to [the blues] because there's a level of honesty to it.''

It's that same honesty that Potter relates to: ''Blues is laying your soul bare in front of anyone and saying, 'I'm completely screwed up or the person I love is'. It's being so honest with the audience that you don't even realise there is an audience there.

''It's not about selling records or finding a demographic. It's about finding your feelings in the musical way. It's so raw and honest it's undeniable. It's meat and potatoes, but with really good gravy.''

One of the more undeniable elements of Potter's music, with her band the Nocturnals, is their raw sexuality.

''You go back to Lead Belly singing, 'Squeeze a lemon till the juice runs down my leg'. Just change the colour of the fruit [to understand it],'' Potter says.

''Sex is a part of [the blues]. It's stripping it down and not putting in too many flowery metaphors.

''I've done that a lot in my songs. We are human beings and we are put on this earth to procreate and that's great.''

Potter admits she avoided a sexual approach to music for a long time, and it was only when she embraced it that her musical fortunes took off. ''I was a wallflower. I just wanted to be one of the guys and oddly enough no one gave a shit [about our music],'' she says. ''Nobody did until I started getting more comfortable as a woman and stopped denying that peacock element.''

While blues has been influential, it has been decades since its popularity translated into high-rotation radio play and it made a dent in the charts. Not counting Mayer's blues-tinged pop, the last artists to do it were Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan 25 years ago.

But it seems blues is on the way back. Gary Clark's third album, Blak and Blu, peaked at No. 6 on the United States charts in 2012, while the last two albums by Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi have knocked on the door of the top 10 and Potter's have made the top 20.

''Blues has a great chance of coming back strong,'' Curry believes. ''In the 1980s, it was Stevie Ray Vaughan. Now, you have people like Joe Bonamassa, Grace Potter, Gary Clark, Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi. It only takes one spark to bring it back to huge popularity and I think we are seeing that process happening now.''

The Byron Bay Bluesfest runs from April 17-21. For festival and sideshow details, see