Sitting in a Field…

Sue, Deb and I enjoyed another Wickham Music Festival (we visited a couple of years ago). This is a lovely small event with only two main tents and several smaller stages scattered around one field. There were several big names from days gone by performing (Gilbert O’Sullivan, Level 42, Judy Collins, Ralph McTell, Graham Nash etc.) and many lesser known acts.

We were lucky for the weather for the most part as it was dry and not too hot during the weekend, the only notable rain started on the morning we started to pack up, resulting in us having to dry out the tent in the garden later when we got home, before packing it away completely for another year.

Among the many acts that we saw performing during the weekend were the following (in no particular order):

• -          Matthews Southern Comfort
• -          Graham Nash (he still has it)
• -          Skinny Lister (a great act that style themselves shanty-punk)
• -          The Proclaimers (we saw them here before and they were very good)
• -          National Youth Folk Ensemble (an impressive collective of young artists)
• -          The Outside Track
• -          The Bar Steward Sons of Val Doonican (a very funny novelty act)
• -          The Spooky Mens Chorale (their usual fabulous selves)
• -          Le Vent Du Nord
• -          Baka Beyond (a very interesting fusion of sounds)
• -          Dreadzone (a foot-stomping good reggae act)
• -          Stanley Jordan (for a short time – a virtuoso guitar performance, but not what we were after)
• -          Level 42 (short time – not quite what they used to be)
• -          Siobhan Miller
• -          Will Pound & Eddy Jay
• -          Cara Dillon
• -          Dervish
• -          The Men They Couldn’t Hang (some)
• -          Frank Turner & the Sleeping Souls (some – not overly impressed)
• -          Afro Celt Sound System (great lively performance)
• -          Winters Hill,
• -          Sam Kelly & the Lost Boys
• -          Jamie Smith’s Mabon
• -          Ross Ainslie & Ali Hutton’s Symbiosis
• -          Blazin’ Fiddles (some)
• -          Treacherous Orchestra
• -          The Kiefer Sutherland Band (suitably impressed)
• -          Alabama 3 (a very moving performance after the loss recently of one of the founder members)

There were also a few dance groups (we saw our local Boxhill Bedlam side), and many wandering acts such as the Dinosaur Group, a tall Scotsman and his rude dog, the Sniffer Dog Patrol, a large tortoise etc.