Festival Histories (UK)

Subject: Festival Histories
From: irishenglish
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 11:19 AM

I was wondering something. There now seem to be a few bands following Fairport's Cropredy festival mold and putting on festivals themselves-The Big Session is just the first one off the top of my head, and I know Runrig had one last year. My question is, is there anything that was a proper festival before Cropredy that was organized by a band themselves? Can be any genre of music, not just folk, but it would have to be the band as orgainzer.

Subject: RE: Festival Histories
From: RTim
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 12:15 PM

Subject: RE: Festival Histories
From: RTim
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 12:16 PM

Sorry - Just pressed the wrong button!

Subject: RE: Festival Histories
From: irishenglish
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 10:22 AM

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Subject: RE: Festival Histories
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 06:03 PM

Certainly not before Cropredy, but the Battlefield Band used to run their own Highland Festival (Highland Circus?) in the '80s, I believe.

Subject: RE: Festival Histories
From: irishenglish
Date: 01 Apr 08 - 06:08 PM

Cool, never heard of that one!

Subject: RE: Festival Histories
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 02 Apr 08 - 12:02 AM

The Battlefield Band Highland Circus was great. I only got to one, around twenty years ago. Held in Ullapool on the North West coast of Scotland, it provided an opportunity for the band to bring back together many former members (I guess they had already been going about ten years by then, with many line-up changes behind them). They also brought in many other artists to this remote area of the Highlands. Allan Taylor was so impressed by the journey across from Inverness he was inspired to write a song about it.

The weekend was fore-shortened by the local observance of the Sabbath (and if you hadn't already bought petrol, you were stuck!) but the local hostelry the Ceilidh Place was still open for business throughout the Sunday, so it wasn't as Spartan an experience as it might have been.

Ross

Subject: RE: Festival Histories
From: GUEST,Vectis
Date: 02 Apr 08 - 01:08 AM

The Vectis Longswords used to organise their own folksong and dance festival on the Isle of Wight back in the 1960s. A three day affair on a farm near Godshill with lots of well-known folk singers and musicians of the day plus local poets and dance sides.

It was the Longswords Folk Festival that gave other Island promoters the idea to host their own rock festival on an adjoining Godshill farm in 1968 with Jefferson Airplane as headliners. Next year they moved the festival to Wootton and booked Bob Dylan. The Longswords Folk Festival couldn't compete with that!

Subject: RE: Festival Histories
From: Rowan
Date: 02 Apr 08 - 06:06 PM

The Nariel Creek Black and White Folk Festival started as a result of a workshop weekend (the Eight Hour Day weekend in Victoria), in 1963, on dances and tunes collected from the Nariel Valley (NE Victoria) in late 1962; at the Nariel Valley Boxing Day dance, actually. The players from whom the tunes and dances had been collected were the local band and that band played both at that workshop weekend and the festival that grew out of it. The festival was held on the local Recreation Reserve, alongside the creek and near the site of a Corroboree Ground, hence the reference to "Black and White".

The Nariel Creek Folk Festival (as it's now known) is the longest running folk festival in Oz and its workshop beginnings set the tone and style for the early National Folk Festivals that commenced (in Melbourne) in 1967. The last surviving member of that original Nariel Band (Keith Klippel) stll plays in the current Nariel Band and descendants of other originals still live in the area and play in the band. One, Ian Simpson, makes and plays Anglo concertinas and uses Australian timbers to make "penny whistles" that Disie, his wife, plays in the band; the whistles are highly thought of by the likes of Gray Larsen.

Unlike most festivals (many of which, to me, are really just concerts that take over a town for a while) Nariel is low key, with no electricity, minimal cost ($25 to camp by the creek and $5 to go to the dances at the local hall (now in Cudgewa; the New Year's Eve dance on the Nariel green is free), nobody gets paid and communal cooking is 'the go' and lots of engagement. There's even a Beginners' Tree, where you can sit and play Boys of Blue Hill ad infinitum (and even poorly) free of criticism.

Not quite the same model as some of the high profile bands mentioned but probably even more influential over the long term.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: Festival Histories (UK)
From: irishenglish
Date: 03 Apr 08 - 10:34 AM

Um...even though I referenced UK bands to start off this thread, I didn't mean exclusively, so I don't know why the UK was added to the thread title.