In the Spring, a person’s fancy turns inexorably toward the festival season. Whether you are camping, glamping, day-tripping, or intent on losing yourself in a foreign field which is comfortably sorted for cheese and fizz, there is something out there for everyone. On our very doorstep (comparatively) we have The Maverick Festival of Americana at Easton Farm Park, near Framlingham, which encompasses everything from the boot-scootin’ to the swampy; the high, keening, and lonesome to the vaudevillian; the Cajun to the ragin.’ It is, essentially, a collection of the finest musicians and songwriters you have never heard of and I, in my capacity as curator of The Travelling Medecine Show, get a front row seat at the feast (to mix metaphors very slightly).
And by ‘curating’ I mean ‘get handed a list of who’s playing and wait for someone with a guitar case, boots and (frequently) a hat to show up looking slightly lost’, for The Medicine Show is an off-menu attraction which is not on the site map, not in the programme, and is where the talent comes to blow off steam. As a result, I’ve witnessed first hand The Bondurants, fresh off the main stage and channelling their inner Kenny Loggins with a storming rendition of ‘Footloose’, the mercurial Lachlan Bryan performing a chilling ‘Red Right Hand’ and Our Man in the Field play a starlit set that could have come straight from Big Pink. If none of these artists mean anything to you, do not worry unduly, they were all just names on a clipboard to me once too.
Seasoned festival goers still talk in hushed tones of the time that local hopeful Ed Sheeran rocked up to play the talent show (he came third). When Billy Bragg was allowed to go over curfew because the parish councillor sent to ensure that we were sticking to our licensing conditions was a fan, and my friend Helen told him in gushing tones that he was “Every boy I’ve ever loved.” Billy Bragg, not the man from the council. There is a best-dressed dog competition, and goat yoga on the Sunday morning soundtracked by a gospel choir. Yes, you read that right.
Side players get the chance to express themselves away from the shackles of their headlining employers, impromptu collaborations spring from nowhere, there’s an open mic on Saturday afternoon which anyone can sign up for, and occasionally a passing plus-one throws their hat into the ring and I am rewarded with (say) a set of Beatles covers performed by Robyn Hitchcock. I cannot tell you what has been planned for this year – I simply do not know – but I can guarantee that when the Medicine Show opens for business this July, there is nowhere I would rather be.
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