Why festivals matter - a photo gallery.

I have been thinking about 2018 festivals of late and that has, in part, been responsible for reminding me about all the artists that I saw in 2017 that, at least in some cases, I have never mentioned before. This is a case of 'Live With No Comment'. I have added the act/artist and the stage to each photo but that is as much as you get.  
All of them were taken by me at End Of The Road Festival 2017 and I own the copyright in these pictures. Feel free to share away but please give credit to the artists. These pictures are in no particular order, by date or any other criterion. I flicked through the photos I took in an haphazard way and simply chose the ones I wanted as and when I found them.

Even more importantly please listen to artists, buy their music, go and see them live.

Julia Jacklin, Garden stage, 3 September.

Goat Girl, Big Top stage, 1 September.

Lisa O'Neill, Tipi stage, 1 September.

Shovels & Rope, Woods stage, 1 September 2017.

Tasseomancy, Tipi stage, 2 September.

Jens Lekman, Garden stage, 1 September.

Girl Ray, Tipi stage, 3 September.

New Music 2018 - Part 5 - Courtney Marie Andrews - May Your Kindness Remain

Early last year when I first got to hear Courtney Marie Andrews' latest LP 'Honest Life' I knew that not only was it destined to be on my list of albums of 2017 (which it is, here) I realised that I needed to see her play live too. I did that and so here she is.

Garden stage, End Of The Road Festival, Dorset, UK. 2 September 2017.

During the set she introduced several new songs and hinted that another LP might not be too far away. It was so, as confirmed today. This is it.

May Your Kindness Remain - Courtney Marie Andrews (Mama Bird Recording Co., 23 March 2018).

Courtney Marie Andrews - May Your Kindness Remain:

• May Your Kindness Remain
• Lift The Lonely From My Heart
• Rough Around The Edges
• Border
• Took You Up
• This House
• Kindness Of Strangers
• I've Hurt Worse
• Long Road Back To You

The lead single from it is also the the title track.

Added 25 January 2018:

Courtney Marie Andrews is confirmed to be playing Green Man Festival 2018.

End Of The Road and all that...

So why have I written nothing since I returned from End Of The Road 2017 a week ago? Well I've been busy at work for a start, catching up on my sleep too and thinking about all the things I saw that weekend. Assisted by, and whilst working through, all the pictures that I took.
I've also been listening to a whole lot of new, some even forthcoming, music and started thinking about those many great albums already released in 2017; equally those still anticipated. Over the next couple of weeks I hope to intertwine my memories of EOTR 2017 with some of these forthcoming things and, also, a few releases the first nine months of 2017 that I have not mentioned up to now for whatever reason. That this will keep me more than busy is something of an understatement.

Le's start with something from last weekend and an artist that I have wished to see live for some years now.

 Lucinda Williams, Garden stage, Friday 1 September.

This stage is unsurpassed in atmosphere in so many ways so I shall stick with it, and a diet of artists from the US, for this post. Of the four artists here this is the only one that I had seen live before at EOTR 2015 but on the Woods stage then. The picture above was taken after nightfall.

Ryley Walker, Garden stage, Friday lunchtime, 1 September.

When the greatest stage light of all, the sun, is in play the Garden stage is unimpeachable. It was to be so again for much of Saturday.

Courtney Marie Andrews, Garden stage, 2 September.

Opening the same stage at lunchtime the same day was an artist from Oklahoma whose recent albums astound me only slightly more than the lack of appreciation that he garners. Yes there was a fair gathering here, certainly a very appreciative and dedicated one as the songs-sung-back attested. It caught a few others by surprise; some of these songs are devastatingly bleak but curiously hopeful rather than depressing.

John Moreland, Garden stage, 2 September.

Green Man :: 2017 :: Dyn Gwrydd - Part 1

It is time to begin my commentary on the time I spent at Green Man Festival last weekend - and the 15th edition of the same. It is appropriate to start with this year's incarnation of the eponymous figure, burnt at midnight on Sunday he is reincarnated in a new guise the next year. This year he had a companion animal too, y ddraig goch (what else?)

Around the bonfire and the red dragon. Early evening Thursday 17 August.

The Green Man, a little before midnight. Saturday 19 August.

The best festivals have a sense of identity that is a combination of location, setting, careful curation - from the choice of music and other entertainment, to the food and drink choices on offer. If successful in time the audience that is attracted becomes an integral part of the festival itself. This is where independent festivals win over the corporate kind.

Now the music. On Thurdsay evening there is a limited offering based around the Far Out and Chai Wallah stages, both of which are tented.
One of the best things about festivals is being taken by live music that one was completely unaware of until the moment happens. This first happened last weekend on Thursday evening at the Far Out stage.

Anna Meredith, Far Out stage, Thursday 17 August.

The instrumental lead-in was enough to arouse my curiosity and not least because it put me in mind of Mary Epworth (see here). I have since determined that the track 'Nautilus' is epic on record but it is quite astonishing live - particularly the percussion.  It may be a highlight but the rest is snapping at its heels.

Anna Meredith 'Varmints' (Moshi Moshi Records, 4 March 2016.)

It occurred to me then that if Thursday evening has me thinking like this then it is either going to be quite some weekend or, on the other hand, it might wind up as a huge anticlimax. Suffice to say that it most certainly did not and I will post about why that was soon.
The next instalment should be up here tomorrow, probably sometime in the evening (UK time).

Thinking about festivals...

It is raining hard as I write this late Monday evening. In 72 hours time I shall be camping for the first of four nights and this time next week, all being well, I shall be back here at home in front of the computer writing about Green Man 2017.
It will be my fourth visit to Green Man in South Wales in successive years since 2014. All those so far have been accompanied by rain to a greater or lesser degree. This one looks like following the theme, yet it has not spoiled any of them thus far. I'm hoping that the same holds this time.
The thing is that, at least to some extent, I know what rain during Green Man involves when it comes because it did in both 2015 and 2016. Truck Festival 2017 was a surprise however, as I had never been to one (four actually) that were bothered by more than a few sharp showers. The deluge was survivable, I'm used to camping in less than ideal conditions, but I certainly don't wish to have to deal with mud like that twice in four weeks. 
I imagine that I would do so however.
There is a limit somewhere, cancellation of the festival being an obvious one, but I'm hoping not to discover it. The thing is, if one were to dwell on all this too much you'd never buy a ticket. These festivals are sold out, weeks if not months in advance, and there is a reason for that. 

So what am I looking forward to...

You might spot that I'm unlikely to be left short of choices. In fact the clashes are likely to many and various. I'll try and add some of my ideas over the next two evenings if only for the fact that it will help me decide some kind of priority. Any suggestions are of course most welcome and I know full well that, once I'm actually there, much of the planning will go out of the window because it always does!
What is not included here are artists appearing on the Green Man Rising stage; new artists that auditioned in a competition for a gig at Green Man, and if the previous years are anything to go by I shall be there on more than a few occasions.

Many are the artists that I have seen live before but would love to see again. There are plenty and then some that I have never seen live.
Several further options are available as there are a number of artists here that are also appearing at End Of The Road Festival 2017 a fortnight later. One of those, that I am absolutely determined to see (at least once), is Gaelynn Lea. She is without doubt one of the finest fiddle players of her generation, and there are plenty of challengers for that crown I'm happy to add.
The perfect description of what being at a festival is actually like was inadvertently provided by former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld:
"There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know."

OK. It is now the aforementioned tomorrow evening,  so what has changed?

I am cautiously optimistic concerning the developments in the meteorological prognostications, which is a pleasant change from the situation this time four weeks ago and a few days before Truck Festival.
Another consideration is what balance to strike between seeing acts that I have already seen live and enjoyed, those I am aware of but have never seen in a live setting and those that are essentially unknown. This is a re-working of Rumsfeld's Ruse in a festival setting. My response is, I suspect, much like his. I will spend much of the next two days thinking about all the options and how they might pan out.  Once I'm actually there and things are happening for real I suspect that will mostly go straight-outta-the-window; I'll do exactly what seems a good response to the circumstances of the moment. I'll come back to some specific acts of note shortly.

Last summer at End Of The Road I saw a number of acts that, had I not already been inside a tented stage when the rain came pouring down, I would never otherwise have done. I strongly suspect that several of them were actually rather more interesting than those that I sacrificed by staying put.

The other question, that of right now, is what to listen to at home in the two days before a festival? I should possibly do a little on-line homework regarding the unknown unknowns.  I will certainly not listen to anything by the artists that I know about whether or not I have seen them live before. I've tried that before and it is in my experience a complete waste of time; like revision just before an exam it sows confusion instead of clarity.
I will for the most part listen to things that are of no direct relevance to the forthcoming festival that are either entirely new to me (hello, Spotify!) or might possibly serve as a frame of reference during the weekend.
To finish this evening's thoughts (the lists are arranged alphabetically)...

Five artists to see live for the first time:
Aldous Harding
Cobalt Chapel
Michael Kiwanuka
PJ Harvey
Ryan Adams

Five artists to see live again:
Angel Olsen
Hurray For The Riff Raff
Pumarosa
Sunflower Bean
This Is The Kit

Here is the latest (no Rising stage listing here, that's all secret).  That's it until tomorrow evening and I have changed my mind again.

Wednesday evening thoughts:
It's pouring with rain just now (9:25pm), which is actually a good thing because it suggests that the weather systems are currently running to the predicted timetable.
In music, it is very tempting to go and see St. Etienne again, not least as this will be featuring songs from the latest LP 'The Home Counties', which is of course just lovely.
Also lurking somewhere in the line-up is Frome's very own Stevie Parker, promoting her 2017 début album 'The Cure'. 😉

Green Man :: 2016 :: Dyn Gwyrdd - A quick site tour.

I week ago that's where I was, in the heart of the Brecon Beacons, so I guess it is about time for some words and pictures about that. I still haven't got any real idea about how to group the artists that I saw and heard into posts.  I'll just start with something else and see whether that leads me to some kind of logistical inspiration.
That somewhere might best be a picture of the (main) 'Mountain stage' taken from a distance and under a glowering sky on Sunday afternoon. For the record the artist playing here is Julia Holter, to whom I shall return somewhat later.

It is true that the weather was less than perfect much of the time but that did nothing of significance to detract from the overall experience. Having started with a scene of the site maybe I should continue the theme for now.

The smallest of the four dedicated music stages is the 'Green Man Rising stage', which principally showcases new, up-and-coming acts.

Here it is viewed from across the pond. I had just returned from seeing Paradisia play there and was on my way back to the Mountain stage. This was Sunday lunchtime and the weather was playing nice at that point.
The Green Man, after which the festival is titled, is a large mythical figure of a different design each year, that is burned just after Sunday midnight. This is this year's incarnation.

Indeterminate weather on Saturday afternoon.

The big blue tent is the 'Far Out stage', the only dedicated music stage that is fully undercover and with a capacity of several thousand standing. Whilst the setting of the Mountain stage is arguably only rivalled by the Garden stage at End of The Road Festival, my pick of the bunch at Green Man is the Walled Garden stage and here it is.

Friday midday. The band is Welsh three-piece Plu.

Not only is it intimate and characterful but it has some of the most interesting artists, at least for my money, gracing it.

The layout at this stage (and indeed elsewhere throughout the festival site) has been much enhanced since last year, which was also rather wet. It's not possible to engineer the weather but it is certainly possible to mitigate the worst of its effects. Another change in the Walled Garden stage is this.

The bar has moved to the back of the garden and changed radically. Now, as well as a handful of beers and the usual other drinks, it hosts an array of thirty draught ciders all brewed in Wales. The seventy draught beers remain for sale in the Courtyard Bar, which is just a minute or two walk away. The result was that both bars were far less overcrowded.

Next I shall turn my attention to some of the music. That is after all what I was there for.

Red Butler - Frome Blues, Rhythm and Rock Festival

After a break of almost two weeks I am back. I have tried writing posts both 'to order' and from self-imposed obligation and neither has tended to work out well. It seems that it is best not to worry about it and simply to wait until the bug, for that it what it is, bites me again.
It's not that I abandon music in these interstices. It is arguable that quite the opposite is true; in this time I have seen seven bands live and this is one of them.

Sunday, May 8 was the latest edition of Frome Blues, Rhythm and Roots festival. All was good but this was a stand-out for me: of course Corky Laing and Martin Turner were excellent - they are both (in all probability) rather older than the parents of any of the four members of  Brighton's Red Butler! This is their début LP but another is to follow towards the end of the year and they played some tracks from that too. This, together with the fact that it is produced by King King drummer Wayne Proctor, bodes very well indeed.

Red Butler - Freedom Bound (2014, self released).

Red Butler was only the second of the six acts to play that day and received a standing ovation from the otherwise seated audience at the end of their forty-five minute set. That might have been a sign of things to come for, as of this evening (17 May), they are confirmed as one of the six nominations in the category 'Blues Band' at the British Blues Awards 2016. A link to all artists and acts short-listed for all categories is here. 

Reading & Leeds: To those that Rock, I salute you...

I don't do getting old all that gracefully but if I have to admit one thing it is that I have no desire whatsoever to brave is Reading/Leeds Festival as it is now. Enjoy your GCSE and A-level results, the music, the freedom, and don't even think about next week...  We only get so many trips round the sun.

Here is the poster from Reading festival 1979.

Be aware that you are becoming a part of history...  history is defined by the things that are much older than you are. History is more interestingly perhaps also defined by the custom type and fonts that were used for the poster.
Think about that...  and the deal on weekend tickets too - available in advance and only by post, of course!

New Music 2015 - Part 9 - 'L' is for live music and also these artists...

Both these artists start their moniker with 'L' and both have connections to the forthcoming Behind The Castle Festival 2015. Of these two, one has just been announced as a headline act and the other is already announced for BTCF 2015. Lizzyspit playing live is a treat that I have had the good fortune to witness twice.

Tonight Lizzyspit is playing at the launch of her début album 'Villains'.

This is happening at Kings Place in London and is also the formal launch of music consultancy and label Upturned Pebble, which is the power behind Marnhull Acoustic Sessions and, of course, Behind The Castle Festival. There is a theme here.

Today Behind The Castle announced one, but only one, of the two remaining headline acts. It is Georgia, USA based Larkin Poe who I have never seen live. Larkin Poe is touring in the wake of the well regarded LP 'Kin' (2014) and a raft of EPs before that. I can hardly wait.
The announcement of the final act is eagerly awaited and it won't be long in coming.
Lizzyspit will be playing Behind The Castle again but, I predict, to a much larger crowd this time.
It is not going to be winter forever even though at the moment it might just seem like that.

End Of The Road Festival 2015 - The first artist announcement.

To cut to the chase here is the list announced today, completely without any comment on my part at least for now.

The accompanying video, which may or may not drop further hints, is here. 
The EOTR animals seem to have developed a taste for vinyl...

My ability not to comment further did not last long. Jessica Pratt was scheduled for EOTR last year but was unable to attend. Not only is it good news that she is on the first list of artists to be announced this year but her second LP 'On Your Own Love Again' is released, at least in North America, tomorrow (27 January) by Drag City Records. I shall add Jessica Pratt as my first 'one to watch' at EOTR 2015.

Reviews are all well and good. I have read several of this release already and perhaps I will write one myself in due course. The live truth will out in September and I'd be very surprised if I were disappointed.
Another inclusion that excites me is Torres. I bought the album last year, direct from her website.

I searched it on amazon.co.uk yesterday and the result, in terms of 'other artists I might like', was interesting.  Of the eight of them it suggested I have already seen all of them live at least once! I'm not sure whether this says more about me or Amazon's algorithm except to say that if I let Amazon choose suggestions for me based on all my searches in music it veers all over the place. It is often quite fascinating, however, so read into this what you will.

End Of The Road 2014 - more highlights

Over the last day or two I have pondered whether to try and theme my further thoughts on End Of The Road 2014 by genre, chronology or stage. In the end I concluded that such divisions were largely immaterial. What really matters is this - more of the acts that I really liked. There are plenty of them and therefore this might cover two posts in time.
To start with is Lau, whose members I have all seen playing live at least once but never together as such. The link above reads like a textbook exercise in hyperbole until, that is, you see it happen live. Here they are, Garden stage, Saturday afternoon.

This is of course one reason that, in the ten years Lau has existed, it has taken away the BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for 'Best Band' four times, most recently in 2013.
Whilst on the subject of quality, another thing to note is that of the printed EOTR festival programme; it is absolutely worth the price (£6) and that is nothing new. The writing, the editorial style and the layout are top notch. The only mistake I noticed was that it said that Cate Le Bon's performance, again on the Garden stage on Saturday, was her EOTR début: it wasn't, she played the same stage in 2010 but no matter.
That was before the release of her first full LP 'Me Oh My' and she was clearly someone to watch. 'Cyrk' was then followed by her latest, 'Mug Museum', and she just gets better and better. More importantly people both here and in the US (she now divides her time between Wales and California) are starting to take notice.

Someone very accustomed to both the Garden and Tipi stages at EOTR is Jocie Adams. That was however with Rhode Island indie stalwarts The Low Anthem. This was her first EOTR outing fronting her own band Arc Iris here as a four-piece and which, as her tradition dictates, played both stages on Friday.

Lunch time, Friday, on a rather breezy Garden stage.

All four in the frame. Tipi stage at the very end of Friday evening.

On the basis of this you might be thinking that I never even visited the Big Top stage. It is true that in comparison with previous years I spent very little time there but one of the few occasions was to catch part of the Pink Mountaintops set.

It is probably true that I spent less time at the Woods stage than in previous years, though I have already mentioned Jenny Lewis playing there. For all my pre-planning I always end up reinventing much of my schedule on-the-hoof and I will continue to do so. This next band was not, pre-festival, particularly on my radar. It just goes to show how very wrong I can be...

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, Woods stage, Friday evening.

Three to see twice - Green Man and End Of The Road 2014

I mentioned this earlier in the week. Now, having caught up with sleep and the pictures, I'm no longer in la la land. Well mostly I'm not; to be quite honest a part of me is still at EOTR 2014!
I made a deliberate policy of seeing three acts that I saw at Green Man all over again, just a fortnight later, at EOTR. The three are Samantha Crain, The Rails and Alice Boman. The curious thing is that all appeared on the Walled Garden Stage at Green Man and on The Tipi Stage at EOTR but, in the latter case one each day. I intend to illustrate this post with pictures I took at both festivals.
When it comes to the stage the Walled Garden wins over the Tipi for its outdoor ambience, but when it comes down to the bottom line it is the band that really matters. I had high expectations of The Rails before I saw them live for the first time at Green Man. They blew me away then --- and then they did it all over again, only more so, last Sunday afternoon. 'Fair Warning' (2014) is the début album and it more than delivers on the promise.

'The Rails' Tipi stage, Sunday afternoon, End Of The Road 2014.

As regards photography, well for all that I am learning faster than I thought I might, it is very much a case of simply handling the cards one is dealt as best one can: everything changes, every time.
One thing that few people seemed to disagree about, at either festival, is the perfection of Alice Boman's vocals. She may not yet be an artist that people buy festival tickets on the strength of but either that time will come or perhaps equally importantly, the strength in depth of the offering will.

Alice Boman, Walled Garden Stage, Green Man 2014, Friday afternoon, squinting into the sun.

Alice Boman, Tipi Stage, EOTR 2014, 10:40 pm Friday.

Here she is selling and signing CDs thereafter. She got through most of that box come the end of the line.

Last but certainly not least, and with more released recordings than either of the aforementioned, this is Samantha Crain from Shawnee, Oklahoma.

Tipi Stage, End of The Road 2014, early Sunday evening.

Samantha Crain, Walled Garden Stage,  Sunday afternoon, Green Man 2014.

Three acts from different countries, UK, Sweden and the US respectively, that exemplify the increasing strength in depth of the folk-roots revival in recent times.

End Of The Road 2014 - Part 2

Shortly before I headed off to the idyll that is Larmer Tree Gardens and the venue for End of The Road I posted a "must see" list of eight acts that does not include any of the three, mentioned in my post yesterday, that I saw at both Green Man 2014 and EOTR 2014. This is how I got on with that. I saw the complete sets of seven out of eight; the exception was Pink Mountaintops and largely because of a time (and day!) scheduling change, but I still saw a few songs in the Big Top tent on Friday.
Lily and Madeleine opened proceedings on The Garden stage on Saturday morning.

They played songs from the forthcoming second LP 'Fumes' and, from what I was able to tell when talking to people during the weekend, gained a whole load of new fans too.

On Saturday evening Marissa Nadler took to the Tipi stage, the smallest of the four main music stages. She has been on my list of "ones to see" for an age, or so it seems, and never more so than since the release of her most recent LP 'July' in February 2014.

This is her seventh studio album in a run that started with 'Ballads of Living and Dying' in 2004. It is the first to have a UK release on Bella Union. Regular readers will be well aware of the importance that I attach to this.

Much the same could be said of Liverpool trio Stealing Sheep since the 2012 début LP 'Into The Diamond Sun'. I mentioned the dragon yesterday.

Stealing Sheep playing The Garden Stage on a gloriously sunny Sunday afternoon. The songs are short, sharply conceived and based for the most part around a percussive format. In the moment it was hard to imagine anything more perfect.  

Stealing Sheep, Tipi Stage, early Monday morning.

Until that is Stealing Sheep became one of very few acts I have seen play two live sets within twelve hours. It is things like this and, more than one might realise, the people you meet that make festivals very special.

August and onward.

A one day festival (Behind The Castle) in June. A two day festival (Truck) in July. 
That was just the warm up. In two weeks time I shall be resident in Powys, Wales at Green Man Festival and it will be my first ever visit, which is exciting. Two weeks later comes my annual pilgrimage, since 2009 at least, to End Of The Road (EOTR). There are so many more... this weekend is the 50th Cambridge Folk Festival  and 21-5th August is the 50th Towersey Folk Festival. In an ideal world I would have quite happily gone to all of these and many more too. I have to say that one that has piqued my interest for a couple of years now, although it is in distant south Suffolk, is Maverick Festival. I could list many more that have caught my eye but seven links in the first paragraph is way more than enough. It is time to focus on those that I am going to and what I might wish from them.
It might be leavened with shorter posts on new music.

I'm thinking that this post is something I shall add to over the weekend and it will be thoughts about the acts that I want to see most at Green Man or EOTR and why. Reviews such as this certainly don't hurt. Ezra Furman is playing EOTR. Never seen him live nor heard his music that I am aware of.
I'll tell you one, from EOTR, that is right at the top of my list - Richard Thompson. I don't need to justify that.

In my eight years of festival attendance the changing balance is to be struck between artists that I have heard before and those new to me. As my recent posts concerning Truck 2014 may have made clear, my liking for seeing new artists, or ones that are merely new to me live or otherwise, remains undiminished. There is now a new category too - artists in new acts/guises. Maybe that is where, probably tomorrow, I shall start this discussion. I have two in particular in mind right now and, echoing the recent comments of Robin Seamer at Breaking More Waves, I have also been thinking about those end-of -year lists too. I rather suspect that the début albums by both will feature on mine.
Here is an observation that is just mine: in 2007 I started my end of year reviews with EPs and mini albums because that was easy. The weren't many and fewer still that I felt worthy of mention and I said then that I had felt it was a dying format. I suspect that in fact I had caught it just reviving from its death throes. It is true that much of this has to due with the ascendency of digital music but that is only part of the Lazarus story. Even in 2007 EPs were starting to appear on vinyl, 7", 10" and 12", and the story continues to grow to the present. This is a more recent, but you would not guess it, example of a single:

It was released physically only on cassette tape.

I could tell you about more worthwhile EPs from the first six months of 2014 than from 2007-9 in total. I don't think, for one moment, that this is simply because I am better informed, although I am. It is much more significant than that.

What this post does lack is photographs but that is an interesting demonstration of a cascade of consequence.
When I started to blog a problem soon became apparent - I needed more original stuff to write about. The obvious answer to that was to go to festivals. Festivals are about live music, which is an intrinsically visual medium too, so I needed pictures of what I saw and heard. 

Behind The Castle Festival 2014 - Part 3 - and on it goes

That I can fill three posts with the result of ten-and-a-half hours live music says a great deal about what was on offer at Behind The Castle 2014 (BTC). There are a couple of acts that I don't mention and simply because I didn't get to listen to, see and photograph everything!
One case in point was Steve Knightly on Stage 2, which was the busiest that venue was all day. That said I saw him recently on his on-going tour of village halls and covered that here. I headed to the MAS stage to catch Dorset duo Ninebarrow instead.

I have seen Ninebarrow live before but could listen all day.

The album 'While The Blackthorn Burns' was released in April 2014.

The same ability to listen also applies to the next artist, also on the MAS stage, who I have never seen live before. Indeed, before the BTC line-up was revealed I was quite unaware of Lizzyspit. This is another fine example of why I like festivals so much.

Arresting original songs and a fine interpreter of others' songs.

If I had to choose just one highlight, and I strongly think that many others shared my opinion here, it would be Megan Henwood and her band on Stage 2 in the early evening. The new songs, from the forthcoming album 'Head, Heart, Hand', are so good and the whole set was a delight.  I couldn't tear myself away and this is why I didn't get to see any of the set by Tinderbox. I'll just have to wait until North Dorset Folk Festival on October 25, 2014.

I haven't even mentioned Rodney Branigan yet...