Come and see live music.

Right then. Spring is coming, sooner or later, and it is time to stop making excuses and start making plans for the summer. If you have never really engaged with live music but thought that you might, be it indoors or outside, now is the time to make some decisions. There has arguably never been such a choice as there is just now. I'll say it now, loud and plain, even vinyl isn't a patch on live performance.
The tired old excuses - about the kids, food, camping, toilets, whatever.... well they don't really hold water any longer. You can have anything you want - from a couple of hours at an intimate indoor gig to four days camping in a field - and it is up to you. What is more is that it doesn't need to cost the earth either. The one thing that you will have to find minders for, if it is more than a short escape, is your pets. Your cat may have other ideas of a good weekend whilst you are away but that's not my problem.

Here is a selection, biased to those that are reasonably local to me but not entirely so:

Nine dates in cities across the UK and Marnhull Acoustc Sessions in a hall that seats about a hundred.
For more about the artists see here  ---  Blair Dunlop  ---  Emma Stevens. At the same venue the following Sunday Megan Henwood and on 10 May Canadian artist Annabelle Chvostek (formerly a member of The Wailin' Jennys). She has a brand new LP 'Be The Media' coming out on 1 June.

Then on 13 June comes the second edition of Behind The Castle Festival and, as it says, it is held just behind Sherborne Castle, Dorset in beautiful parkland. Bigger and better than last year, which was great this one-day family-friendly festival now has camping overnight on the Saturday (but you need to book that and soon) and will have enhanced catering and bar facilities as well as more stuff just for kids.
Here is the upper crust of the line-up. The rest won't disappoint.

In the way such things can happen, one of the artists not on the above list has been forced to cancel owing to illness. The replacement, who would otherwise have been on the list above, is to be announced tomorrow. It will be worth watching, trust me.
That is not to say that the others in the running list are any less worthy of your attention or indeed mine. I'm a firm believer in always arriving in time to see all of the support sets at any gig and, in so far as is possible, turning out to see the opening acts on festival stages even at 11am on Sunday morning.
You might just get the live music bug. If you do then the longer festivals beckon.
When summer is fading in to autumn  it will be time for North Dorset Folk Festival. That is a long time off and we must not wish all those months away.

If I were to write such a piece then it would not come out much different to this very recent preview:
http://www.rock-regeneration.co.uk/wordpress/2015/04/news-behind-the-castle-music-festival/

Marnhull Acoustic Sessions - Miranda Sykes and Rex Preston

This evening Marnhull Acoustic Sessions celebrated its second birthday with its return for 2015 at the customary venue deep in the north Dorset countryside. Always a gem, it showcases astonishing acts in intimate surroundings and today the treat was Miranda Sykes and Rex Preston.

Miranda Sykes and Rex Preston, Marnhull Acoustic Sessions, 22 February 2015.

The duo is currently part way through an extensive UK tour ending late April, after which they tour with US guitarist Grant Gordy as a trio. That is certainly something that I would like to see and hear live.
If you miss all that they then return to Dorset (as a duo) at the second Behind The Castle Festival at Sherborne Castle on Saturday 13 June.
This is shaping up to be a quite awesome day and Miranda Sykes actually appears twice in different rôles - as above and also as one third of the legend that is Show of Hands, with Phil Beer and Steve Knightley. The *BIG ANNOUNCEMENT*, that of the main stage headline act, is happening this coming Thursday (26 February). Last year The Levellers filled that spot most admirably and this year's act in that slot will not disappoint!

Before Behind The Castle Festival happens Marnhull Acoustic Sessions has another three spring editions:

• 19 April   ---  Blair Dunlop with support from Emma Stevens
• 26 April  ---  Megan Henwood
• 10 May   ---  Annabelle Chvostek (once one of The Wailin' Jennys)

Serious stuff at a venue that seats approximately one hundred.  Just take the first of the three; their ten-date tour includes nine UK cities and Marnhull Acoustic Sessions.

* The Waterboys

Mike Scott and company are confirmed as Behind The Castle 2015 main stage head-liners. Here they are seen at Green Man Festival 2014.

This prompts me to think that I should write more about 2015 festivals. My plans in that regard are near complete. I like the idea of plans and dates that I can work around.
Here is an artist pictured at Behind The Castle 2014 but, as mentioned above appearing at Marnhull Acoustic Sessions.

Megan Henwood releases her second LP 'Head, Heart, Hand' this spring.

Green Man 2014 - Part 3 - other things and other stages

The rather nebulous title of this post tells a story. I haven't quite decided on the direction of this post really but, with End Of The Road 2014 less than a week away, I feel the need to put keyboard to screen. If it is a bit rambling then I'm not really going to apologise. Festivals are like that anyway. It is part of the charm.
Like some others, Glastonbury most notably, Green Man holds a competition to seek out new talent. It clearly has some traction because this year there were around five-hundred entrants. The prize is an opening slot on the Mountain Stage on Saturday morning. The winners were London based duo Wildest Dreams.

Or they were Wildest Dreams when they won. Last Saturday they announced, during the set, that they were now simply Wyldest. The implication is that the dream had been realised. In accord with my policy concerning opening acts (Wildest) Dreams were right there on my must-see list.
Essentially a dream-pop (not a bad word in my lexicon) duo, this a big stage to fill. I have to say that during sound check Zoe Mead (vocals, synth, loops and occasionally guitar) and Holly Mullineaux (guitar, vocals) looked pretty nervous. They pulled it off perfectly - all the more remarkable when they announced "this is one of our older songs, it was written in June". The band only formed in April 2014.

Until now I have not transported to the tented 'Far Out' stage although it was where I spent all of Thursday evening. This provided, amongst other things, my first chance to see The Waterboys live. When I worked in Bristol in the early 1990s Waterboys cassettes, along with The Levellers (see here), were an integral part of the soundtrack in the lab!

Early on a sunny Sunday afternoon I made a pre-planned visit to the darkness of the Far Out stage. Samaris was the reason - it was like Christmas and Iceland winning Eurovision combined.  This is not as silly as it might seem - I have been aware of Samaris for some time, indeed here, and that was just another addition to the Green Man line-up that convinced me of its virtue. I was aware as a result of the 2011 self-released EP Hljóma Þú.

The three-piece combine total electronica with clarinet and vocals and it works. It simply would not work on an outdoor stage in daylight, however. That, at least in part, is why I think it could take Eurovision to pieces. All the songs are sung in Icelandic, which sounds beautiful incidentally, and means any lyrical concerns are entirely self-limiting.