Thoughts on 2016 festivals...

The snowdrops are out and therefore spring is only a month, or maybe two, away!
It is that time of year once again - time to think about festivals this coming summer. That is not to say that the weather will play nice but what's not to like?

Three pictures from Green Man Festival 2015 and not a programme artist performing!

I've pretty much finalised my festival-going ideas for 2016 but confirmation of the detail remains, as does the vast majority of the artists appearing at all of them. That is something I can take on trust; the ambience is also an important consideration too.
One thing that is already decided is that, despite having a wonderful time at Cambridge Folk Festival 2015, I shall not be returning in 2016.

Dyn Gwyrdd 2015 - Green Man - Part 2 - The Walled Garden

I like the smaller stages, that is no revelation unless you haven't been reading for long and in which case hello and welcome. Of those stages at Green Man Festival the Walled Garden stage is the one that matters most. Here is just a flavour of what happened within those four walls last weekend.
I'm not going to do this in chronological order, as of the festival, but I will start with an artist that I have serial convictions, as regards failure to see live, going back as far as 2009. Nothing is ever that simple...

Emmy The Great - Walled Garden stage - Friday evening.

To some extent I like it simply for its unpredictability. Here it is in the rain late on Sunday morning.

and, just minutes later...

Meilyr Jones playing and it is raining no longer!

That is Stephen Black, aka Sweet Baboo. playing bass on the far left of the shot. Never knowingly under used! It is not the only time, as this post unfolds, that artists appear more than once...

This next artist was not the easiest to photograph - she put me in mind of Angel Olsen at Green Man last year.

The opening act on Saturday was Anna B Savage.

On Sunday, and utterly different, was Norwegian singer and songwriter Aurora Aksnes.

Back to Saturday evening...  no band is as aptly named as this and the latest album 'Bashed Out' carries the theme admirably, right down to the point of walking on stage attired as on the cover artwork of the album. It was too warm for the jumper to last even the first song and the hat was removed soon afterwards too.

This Is The Kit - Kate Sables on banjo (at least for now) and Rozi Plain (see below) on bass.

Rozi Plain played the same stage on Friday afternoon in support of her latest LP 'Friend'. 

Once upon a time...

With this blog fast approaching its eighth birthday, which is old for such things and solo-written ones in particular, it has set me thinking.
I started to attend festivals because of it. I needed stuff to write about. At that point I realised that I needed pictures too, and I wasn't going to rely on promotional ones, so I therefore I needed to take my own. I bought a Fuji F20 compact - I still have it and I still use it - and off we both went to Latitude Festival 2007.  To be quite honest, while the camping and stuff was well in hand, I hadn't quite thought out the music side of things properly. I didn't keep track of what I had seen and it proved very difficult to piece it together afterwards. OK - you learn from mistakes like that. You also learn a lot more from just being there, trying to do what you want to do, and talking to people. The best thing about going to a festival alone is that it forces you to talk to strangers; they are the only friends you have. On the other hand you have no obligation to pander their particular agenda or they to yours for that matter.

By 2008 I had basic control of most of that and, in 2009, made my first foray to End Of The Road Festival in Dorset. This became a favourite and not just because it is only 35 miles drive from home. It was love at first sight. By this time I had started to do advance planning, almost military style, of what I wanted to see and how to go about it. As usual there are plenty of last-minute changes and even SNAFU events.
The result of one of them turned out like this. I got to see an act I had never heard of and hadn't planned to see. Afterwards I said they could be big. My interlocutor said that that they would be forgotten within a year.

Klara (R) and Johanna Söderberg, First Aid Kit, on the Tipi Stage, End of The Road 2009. Five years (and three albums) later this is the first time I have used this photograph. There were perhaps 150 people watching them play then. Here they are last Sunday - playing to ten thousand, maybe even more than that, at Green Man Festival 2014.

Any which way it was comfortably the biggest crowd of the festival. Tickets for the UK dates of the forthcoming autumn headline tour are all but gone too. Less than fifty remain for the gig at The Royal Albert Hall, London, on 24 September. By the time you read this they will probably all be gone.
That applies to End Of The Road Festival 2014 too - the final tickets went this afternoon.

Green Man 2014 - a preview.

Green Man 2014 is now sold out. I am in anticipation of my first ever visit and to be quite honest the line up looks as though it might present one of the most clashes between stages that I have ever tried to square.
I can even get a readable image of the list into a single screen-full that you can read but still be prepared to scroll and/or zoom.

I'll be busy.

Would I like to chose a pre-festival must see list? Quite frankly, no!

I wouldn't want to do it for just one stage let alone the combination of them. One thing that makes things easier in some ways is that there are quite a few acts that I have seen before. That of course doesn't mean I don't want to see them again, because for the most part I do, but they are something of a known quantity live. On the other hand there is almost no overlap with Truck Festival 2014, which I went to last month or End of the Road 2014 in a fortnight's time

Here as a compromise is a short list, in alphabetical order, of eight acts that I have never seen live before but are on my "list of ones to see". None are appearing at EOTR 2014 unless I'm mistaken. It covers all stages and many of them have appeared in these posts before:

• Angel Olsen
• Fat White Family
• Georgia Ruth
• Joanna Gruesome
• Laura Groves
• O'Hooley & Tidow
• Samaris
• Wildest Dreams

The links were chosen on the basis of what attracted me to seeing them live although this is likely not where I first got that information. I deliberately have not included amongst them anything that I have written. In the case of Joanna Gruesome the link was chosen on the basis of its explanation of the bands formation. It maybe quite the urban myth but who wants the truth to get in the way of a good tale?
There's some variety of music in the list, I think.