The Festival? The Fes-Ti-Val.

Well. That's it. One more year's spring-summer drawing to a close, and, with it, one more year's worth of festivals. This year, despite* the Glastonbury-sized hole in the season, I ended up doing tonnes** of festivals, weekend after weekend, so that it kind of just felt like the whole time was just One Giant Festival. One giant mud puddle, one giant fresh-cooked donut, one giant line-check. So, in case you were wondering, here, in chronological order, are the festivals I played this year and four things about each:

•Dartmouth Music Festival (w/ Stringbeans):
     -Beautiful setting: boats!
     -City festival, so, pubs and churchs and things for venues.
     -No proper stay-overnight facilities, so camped in someone's backyard.
     -Ice cream: 2.5/5

•Mayhem in the Meadow (w/ Nuala):
     -Not really Mayhem at all.
     -Real small, friendly.
     -Near ocean, so: Swimming!
     -Food, pasta with watery sauce, decidedly middling.

•Fire in the Mountain (w/ WFTB):
     -New favourite, maybe!
     -River to swim in!
     -Chased/loved by large group of horses!
     -Loads of good free food!

•Keynsham Music Festival (w/ WFTB):
     -Very, um, small town (lots of electric guitar solos)
     -I was introduced as "performance art"
     -A free festival, which is nice for Keynshamites.
     -Big plowman's spread for artists served by quite-cute elderly church types.

•Priddy Music Festival (w/ The Availables):
     -One of the muddiest. Sue goes barefoot to save shoes, pulls up worms with toes.
     -Bunch of tents in a field type thing. Also a pub.
     -Kind of non-descript and hard to remember.
     -No free food for artists. Hm.

•Lushfest (w/ The Nightjar Orchestra):
     -Free soap! So much free soap! So much!
     -Free ferris wheel!
     -Festival for Lush employees from around the world. Which is pretty neat.
     -Don't remember what I ate, but it was good and free.

•Larmer Tree (w/ The Availables):
     -More mud, rain.
     -Bigger festival in a bigger field. Maybe even several fields.
     -Everyone seems happy. Even at 10am in the rain.
     -Lotsa stuff in the dressing room. Some ryevita crisps that were very cardboardy, and good cookies.

•Village Pump Festival (formerly the Trowbridge pump festival) (w/ Reg Meuross):
     -Right underneath the white-horse, which is cool.
     -Main stage, which is neat, but sound issues. Lotsa frantic running around technicians.
     -Breakfast with Seth Lakeman n crew.
     -Free food AND hotel. Right by Laura and Allan's.

•Bath Folk Festival (w/ The Availables):
     -City festival (venues around town)
     -Really good sound. Thanks James.
     -Actual folk folk festival. Like, loads of concertinas and things.
     -No food, but I'm stuffed, so don't care.

•Greenman (w/ Nuala):
     -They burn a giant green man. So, like burning man, but in Wales. So, raining.
     -Lots of great other music. TuNeYaRdS! Feist!
     -Also incredibly muddy. My riding-boots/wellies are the best thing I ever got for free on freecycle.
    -Lots of great food from the Chai Wallah people. Some kind of banana and granola soup that was       actually really good.

•Shambala (w/ Nuala):
     -They pay for me and Charlie to rent a BMW to drive down. Which is pretty nice.
     -75% of patrons are dressed up. Crazy costumes and inhibitions galore.
     -Lots of workshops. Wood-carving. Stone-cutting. Lathing. Sewing. All these sorts of thing.
     -Some of the best (maybe The Best?) performance poets I've ever seen.
     -Food is middling, but free. No donuts, but there is nettle beer.

Now, time for some work that doesn't require rubber boots, food tokens, water-proofed (with a garbage bag) viola case. Not that I don't love my work. I love my work.


*Or maybe due to?
**tons