Now returned from the Butlins Big Folk Festival at Skegness.
Hmmmm.
Not really a folk festival – just one long weekend series of concerts.
There were no music or sing around sessions, no dance sides, a few stalls but, sadly, no dance venue!!
A visit to the "pub" and a chat with the management, who'd never heard of a session, but liked the idea, agreed to make their conservatory available. This proved to be a winner and was well supported through the weekend – why didn't the organisers know about this kind of thing when the punters did? Hopefully, they will learn and take it on board for next year.
Yes, there were two "Open Mic sessions" but a chance to showcase for a couple of minutes and strut your stuff isn't quite a session is it?
My personal suspicion is that the tried, tested and proven formula for 60's/70's/8o's/Rock 'n' Roll weekends was applied to this weekend in the naive belief that it would work in the same way – I lost count of the number of people who commented that "this weekend seems to have been organised by someone who doesn't really know very much about folk festivals."
Two giant arenas with state of the art sound systems should have been ideal for presenting the acts but, again, so much was poor. I could see and hear performer after performer frantically signalling to sound engineers for a good 15 minutes into their set before the sound, even on stage, was acceptable.
Why did it take 30-45 minutes for each change over when temporary set-ups at other weekend folk festivals (whether huge, like Shrewsbury or smaller, like Ely – equally good, by the way) manage it in less than 10 minutes?   My evil mind says that if you are going to hang on to your seat for half an hour between each act change, in a very warm arena then there is only one thing to do – buy another drink
With so much permanent equipment, why was the sound quality and mix so abysmal when, again, these other festivals do so well?                                                                                          
So, what was good?                                                                                                              As always, a chance to meet up with chums and see a variety of good folk acts at a very good price but that doesn't make it a Folk Festival.