Ramsbottom Festival 2015 Preview

Summer's well and truly over, and we know this because it has stopped raining. We also know this because Ramsbottom Festival is happening this weekend 18-20 September (and wonder of wonders, the forecast is for partly sunny weather Saturday and Sunday! Friday looks, well... considerably less dry.) As usual, you can expect arty sideshows, family events and way too much good beer. You can peruse the full musical lineup here but here's the headlines: Friday headliner: The Wonder Stuff. Saturday Headliner: Idlewild. Sunday headliner: The Proclaimers. But who else can you see? These guys, for starters...

Jesca Hoop


The Magic Numbers



Black Rivers


Slow Readers Club



The Go! Team


Blue Rose Code


Walk



Adult Day tickets from £24, for booking and full information visit the Ramsbottom Festival website.

Ramsbottom Festival 2014 preview

Summer has gone from the Pennine Hills. Stepping out of the door in the morning, you can see your breath. The blackberries have just gone past ripe and the woods are rich with the smell of dying leaves. All are sure signs that Ramsbottom Festival must be just around the corner, and here it comes right on schedule, the weekend of September 19-21 at Ramsbottom Cricket Club. It's always a friendly festival and a very good time, and luckily for me it's within stumbling distance of my house.

The big news this year is that they've added another stage, so we can all get more music in. What's on the lineup then? Topping the bill on Friday it's The Levellers, veterans of many a festival. Bet they've got some stories.



Saturday's headliner is epic indie outfit British Sea Power, one of those bands whose name perfectly fits their music, and always conjures up images of Sellafield under stormy skies. Hopefully the heavens will open and give us some driving rain during their set for added effect (I'm only kidding. Oh god, watch it rain now and everyone blame me.)



Sunday's traditionally the big day for folk, so it's a bit of a surprise that closing out the festival action is 1980s/90s R&B superstars Soul II Soul.



Lower down on Friday's billing you'll find Jimi Goodwin, frontman of Manc indie outfit Doves. His first solo album is out on Heavenly:



Also on Friday, Colne husband-and-wife band Bird to Beast do retro-inflected folky poppy stuff.



Scottish folk pop band Admiral Fallow are back again, on Saturday:



Sunday things get seriously folky with Irish singer Cara Dillon:



Also on Sunday: ultralocal (think they live in Ramsbottom?) band A Harp and a Monkey:



But of course that's just the music. With kids' day tickets from just £6, there's plenty in the way of arty amusement for  small members of your party, with performers including Artful Playground, Pif-Paf theatre company and a folklore-inspired shadowplay installation from events wizards Walk The Plank. This is a festival that always takes its beer very seriously, and this year it's going to be provided by Silver Street Brewing Company and Bury's Own Outstanding Beers, with the usual array of good street food. And if we're really lucky, we'll see that guy in the stripey jumper with the stripey-painted face dancing barefoot through the puddles. I love that guy. See you there.

Day tickets from £24, weekend tickets £66. They're laying on buses from Manchester and Chorlton, or take the East Lancs Railway steam train. Full info and tickets on the Ramsbottom Festival website.

Ramsbottom Festival 2013 preview

And just like that, the summer's over. The tan is fading and the weather has turned cold and clammy. Which means only one thing: wrapping up warm for a few days of cracking music, great beer and all-around funtimes at Ramsbottom Cricket Club for Ramsbottom Festival. With The Bridgewater Hall joining Bury Met as a partner this year, the lineup looks stronger than ever, and they've expanded the range of family performances and activities too. Here's a little taster of what we can expect musically:

Friday is raging rock and roll night for all the young folk who still have the joints and livers for it.  Rage, rage against the dying of the light... and pray for good weather.

The Futureheads:  Catchy jingly-jangly guitar indie that makes you jump around. I have much love for their famous cover of Kate Bush's Hounds of Love.

 

Public Service Broadcasting: Interesting band with a penchant for building songs around sound archive samples. Elegaic, epically British stuff.

Twisted Wheel: Manc indie outfit widely hailed as the natural heirs of Oasis (god help 'em)





Saturday is a mixed bag: acts spanning folk rock, pop, indie, world and probably quite a lot of time in the Silent Disco tent, wearing a hole in the grass. It can get pretty crowded in there when it rains though. Pray for good weather.

Richard Hawley: The Sheffield blues troubadour plays the kind of music that makes you think he hops freight trains and smokes 40 Marlboro Reds a day. I have no idea if he actually does, but it works for me.

 

The Beat: The legendary 1980s Two Tone ska band. When I first encountered them we called them The English Beat and yes, I owned this on vinyl. Sigh.

 

Junip: Dreamy, understated pop folk from the Jose Gonzalez-fronted Swedish trio




Sunday things chill down for a grand folkfest. Which is fortunate, as by now many of us are a little shaky and liable to start at sudden loud noises. But seriously, if you're into folk, Ramsbottom is the place to be on Sunday. It's fantastic to see such a strong (and female-dominated) lineup this year. Pray for good weather, though.

Sinead O' Connor: People tut at the supposedly scandalous things she says and does, but when you get down to it Sinead is just a great musician with a voice that will freeze the balls off you at forty paces. And that's honestly all I care about. She does make me laugh though.

Eliza Carthy, Bella Hardy and Kate Young : You want trad folk? You can't go wrong with this festival-circuit special trio.


The Unthanks: Dark, uncanny folk with Northeast roots from the critically-acclaimed Unthank sisters, who are pretty much single-handedly reviving interest in this kind of music.

Chasing Owls: An Edinburgh-based band who make music of the amiable indie-folk persuasion. (Violin solos and handclaps) Quite sweet.

Got your tickets? Adult weekend tickets from £65 and day tickets from £23 available at the Ramsbottom Festival website along with full info on everything else. See you there.

Sinead and Richard Hawley headline Ramsbottom Festival

I expected good things from Ramsbottom Festival this year, but Richard Hawley (aka the bard of Sheffield) and Sinead O'Connor as headliners is beyond exciting. And errrmmm I'm looking forward to seeing Futureheads too, even if I can't think of any of their songs besides that Hounds of Love cover just at this minute (hear that? That's the sound of whatever small amount of indie cred I still possessed vanishing in a puff of smoke)

But further down the lineup announced a few minutes ago there are gems aplenty: The Unthanks, the ace Junip, who my brother recently turned me on to, the really rather cool Public Service Broadcasting, and The (English) Beat. Full lineup and details here at the festival website. I'll be publishing a full preview closer to September, but in the meantime: YAY.

Ramsbottom Festival 2012 preview

I am making many sacrifices to the rain gods in hope that the sun will shine down upon our soggy Pennine Valley over the weekend of September 14-16, when the Ramsbottom Festival comes to town. Last year's festival was many things, but dry was not one of them. It was, however, all of these things: fun, well-run, immensely entertaining, child-friendly, adult-friendly and (in a humble, Rammy-appropriate way) totally rocking. You can read my review here.

Can we expect the same degree of awesomeness this year? I had a nice chat with Victoria Robinson from The Met the other day and she filled me in. For starters, ticket prices have gone down (when does that ever happen?) with day tickets £18 on Friday and £20 Saturday and Sunday,  weekend tickets £50 and Saturday/Sunday tickets £37.50. Kids under 6 are free, kids 6-16 pay £5 day and £10 weekend, and there are family tickets available too. (You can buy tickets here )

You can't really do anything about the weather, but there is much more preparation happening at the Ramsbottom Cricket Club site to prevent mud and/or flooding in the event of serious rain. They've done more to make the festival truly family friendly: There's going to be a ladybird tent with children's entertainments, and the funfair rides will be free. The festival ale will be brewed within shouting distance at Rammy's own Irwell Works Brewery, whose wares I was able to sample the other day and I'm not at all worried about the quality of the beer. Camping has moved to St. Andrews Primary School, a short walk away.   (Updated: I heard residents' complaints have put the kibosh on this campsite, but sure the festival folks have cooked something else up for campers.) And I understand they're laying on coaches to transport folks to and from Chorlton and the city centre each day of the festival. Not as atmospheric as arriving by steam train on the East Lancs Railway, perhaps, but surely very handy for some.

Here are some of the acts I'm most excited about:

Sometime in early 2004 I went to my very first Manchester gig knowing literally nothing about the band, the venue, or the city. I just thought the band's name sounded interesting. It turned out to be I am Kloot at The Night and Day. (Yes, I accidentally went to the most Manchesterest gig ever.) They put on a great show and I instantly became a fan of this fine band, fronted by the raspy-voiced songwriter Johnny Bramwell, joining an army of other Mancunians who make up their loyal following. Why they haven't gotten really big like their contemporaries Elbow and Doves is a complete mystery to me.



I like folksinger Thea Gilmore a lot, something about her lyrics remind me a bit of Suzanne Vega. Her ballads are beautiful, spare things. Recently she became a little bit famous when the BBC used her song 'London' in an Olympics montage. Her latest album sets to music a notebook of Sandy Denny's lyrics found after the folksinger's untimely death. Here's an older song:



The Leisure Society are an artful indie band whose arrangments and musicianship put most of their contemporaries to shame. I saw them play a great show at Ruby Lounge a couple of years ago so I'm expecting a good set from them. Their biggest hit is probably this beautiful song:

Scottish musician Roddy Frame is a wonderful songwriter, and I'm looking forward to hearing his new solo stuff. But most people will surely know him best as the lead singer of Aztec Camera, the ace indie band from the 80s whose hits included Somewhere in my heart and my favourite, this one:



Seth Lakeman is a traditional fiddler and singer-songwriter who was nominated for the Mercury Prize a while back. This song is about a servant girl who killed herself on Dartmoor and is said to haunt the place. Intense.

 

Liz Green has become a firm favourite in the Manchester area and is developing a growing audience around the country. A bluesy folksinger whose voice sounds a lot like Billie Holliday to me, doing her own thing musically and sounding great at it.
 


There are plenty of other acts on. Some performers my friends are excited about include: Roddy Woomble (of Idlewild fame), The Inspiral Carpets (sorry, I kind of missed that whole Madchester thing) Air Cav and Admiral Fallow. And there's plenty more fun to be had in the silent disco, which proved the sleeper hit of last year.

But as entertaining as the silent disco was, it couldn't compare to the sheer joy of watching this guy dance. Like a Lancashire Bacchus, Stripeyman embodied the true spirit of the festival. I'll be looking out for him.

Stripeyman photo by Brian Connor.

Ramsbottom Festival 2011: The Recap

So I've just about recovered from the inaugural Ramsbottom Festival. Here's a little summary:

Rain factor: You have an outdoor music festival in Ramsbottom. In September. Of course it's going to rain. The question is, how much and when. This rain wasn't too bad - it came and went, it was a bit of a drag, but you could mostly ignore it. There was always a place to get out of it if you wanted to.There was no wading through mud. We even had a few hours of sun on Sunday.

Best in show: The Waterboys. It was the very last band of the festival, it was dark, cold and wet, but they still made it very possibly the rockingest Sunday night Ramsbottom has ever seen. Those guys are professionals. The encore of Fisherman's Blues had the crowd twirling like idiots and sent us all home smiling (and shivering):


Runners up: Cherry Ghost, The Travelling Band and Young Knives all turned in solid performances on Saturday, Capercaillie rocked on Sunday. Can a traditional Celtic band rock? The answer is yes.

Miss (Non)Congeniality award: Badly Drawn Boy. I've always been kindly disposed to the beardy one's music, but after seeing this performance I'm less kindly disposed. He started things off by having a hissy fit about the sound and finished up by grousing that he should have been the headliner. In between: a whole bunch of meh. Stay in Chorlton next year and knit yourself some new hats, dude.

Personal disappointment: Missing Steve Cropper Friday evening. It was very wet, but still.

Taste sensation: Salted Caramel and Peanut Butter ice cream on a toasted brioche from the wonder that is Ginger's Comfort Emporium (long may they reign.) Really freaking good.

Best non-live-music-related activity: Silent Disco. Lots of fun.

Unexpected impressive thing: Whalley Range All Stars "PIG" performed inside a specially-built pig. The play was ten minutes long and only ten people could watch it at once. The audience had to don curly tails and stick their heads right into ten holes along the pig's belly, so they looked like a line of piglets.

Best thing for kids: The bouncy pirate ship, apparently. I spent about two hours standing next to this handing a very polite teenage girl money while my daughter bounced. And bounced. And bounced. Lots of kids about on Sunday, not so many on rainy Saturday. And don't ferris wheels look cool at night?

Comfort Factor: Weather aside, the festival was a pretty comfortable place to hang out. The drinks were excellent and keenly priced - Outstanding Beers' very pleasant festival real ale at £2.50 for a reasonably sized pint, fancy shmancy cider for £3.50. I think they had some weird mixed-drink-in-a-bottle stuff going on too, but I didn't get involved in that. In short, a far sight better than the shockingly bad beer selection (Bud and Coors?? In plastic bottles? Really?) at the Manchester International Festival pavillion this summer. You got served quickly at the bar. The food vendors were good and again, nobody was ripping you off (£5 for a massive plate of tasty Tibetan Kitchen.) There were enough toilets, so you didn't spend hours in the loo queue, and they stayed reasonably clean. Thumbs up.

Best flavor of Rekorderlig Cider: Strawberry Lime. I know, me either.

Unexpected funny thing: The VIP area resembled a cattle market - a roped off, exposed-to-the elements plot with bare benches, about as far from the stage as it could be. I think I saw two people in there all weekend. That kind of sums up the festival's ethos nicely.

Hero of the day: Stripeyman. The tirelessly boogieing, permanently ecstatic painted fellow below will dance on in the memories of festivalgoers for many years to come. I'll have what he's having.

In summary: a very good time. Of course, I walked down the road to get there, was sensibly attired and got in for free, so admittedly it would have to be awful for me not to have enjoyed it. But it surpassed my expectations in pretty much every way (apart from the weather, sadly.) Hey, I'm looking forward to next year already.

All images Brian Connor (via Flickr.)

Ramsbottom Festival Sept 16-18 2011

I don't want to be a smug, horrible person, but I've got to say it: Ramsbottom is pretty wonderful. I really do love living here. It's hard to keep this in mind at certain times (like when I ocasionally miss the last tram to Bury.) It's bloody miles away from the nearest (non-steam) train station. There's no decent bakery, no bookstore, and the town shuts down on Wednesday afternoons which is both quaint and annoying. And old-fashioned mill towns in the Pennines can be bleak places in the winter. But it's a beautiful place with an old-school community feeling, and I mostly love it.

So I realise I'm becoming almost insufferably happy to be living here now that the Ramsbottom Festival is about to kick off. It's a proper music festival, with camping and nice food and beer and DJing and kids' activities and multiple stages. And crucially, good music. I'd be excited about a festival like this starting anywere around Manchester. But to have it delivered virtually on my doorstep, a few days after my birthday, is like God's way of saying "sorry about that whole hurricane-and-vomit vacation, I've still got your back."

The festival takes place at the lovely Ramsbottom Cricket Club on 16-18 September. Bury Met, a real gem of a performing arts venue that we are extremely lucky to have right down the road, have programmed a weekend full of music with something for everyone. As with much of their programming the overall focus is on relaxed, sunshiney acoustic pop, folk, celtic and roots, with a welcome jolt of high-test indie and blues. The last supplied by Steve Cropper, Stax guitar legend. You know, Booker T and the MGs? Green Onions?

Indie fiends will be happy with The Young Knives, Cherry Ghost and Guillemots. Yup, it's pretty cool that a band as big as Guillemots is going to be playing at Ramsbottom Cricket Club.



Folkier folks should come on Sunday, when The Waterboys headline and the lineup includes Celtic band Capercaille, led by glorious singer Karen Matheson


...and ahab, amusingly identified as a "German funeral doom trio" in their Spotify bio:


There's a fair number of performers from Manchester, but thankfully there's an emphasis on quality local talent. And world class talent that just happens to live here, like Chorlton's own Badly Drawn Boy. The beardy one always puts on a good show, and he doesn't have far to come for this one. I'm hoping he'll play his near-as-dammit Smiths cover "I saw you walk away." Which I would find totally objectionable if it wasn't so good.



Other Mancunian standouts include raspy-voiced Kirsty Almeida and her charmingly ramshackle band...




...and 6music frequent fliers The Travelling Band:



It's also good that they're serious about making this a family event, with reduced prices for kids, a creche, rides and children's activities. If I were coming from Manchester, I'd take the East Lancs Railway from Bury and arrive in style by steam train (the ELR station is just outside the entrance and they're doing cheap tickets for the day with parking at the stations in Bury and Rawtie). Definitely don't drive - parking is a nightmare here at the best of times. A bus and tram daysaver is the way to go from anywhere else in Greater Manchester - you get the tram to Bury and pick up the Rammy circular which runs every 10 minutes. Booking info here. See you there!