The
post-festival comedown is generally not what one might term “a good
trip”. There’s the unpacking, the washing, the nagging thought
that you’ve left a mallet somewhere in a field or that cows will
choke on that last tent peg you couldn’t quite prise out of the
ground, and the knowledge that tomorrow, it’s back to the old
routine. Admittedly, some might say that going to a festival in the
first place isn’t a good trip either, but these people have not
been to Maverick. Free from the incessant online drip, drip, drip of bad
news, celebrity gossip, paparazzi upskirting and relentless political
idiocy, it is a safe haven of heartsong music, positive vibes, late
night sessions, good food and fine company. There are no below the
line comments at Maverick.
Once
again I had the pleasure and privilege of wrangling the
small-but-perfectly-formed Travelling Medicine Show stage, where the
unwashed and slightly dazed are treated to impromptu sets from many
featured artists from the festival playbill proper, as well as
guests, friends and – through chance, good fortune and a short
notice cancellation, a respectable quorum of Helen and The Neighbourhood Dogs. I tend to treat it very much a series of personalised house concerts, and there are always a couple of undiscovered gems to be unearthed along the way. This year's main contender - for me - was Riley Catherall, whose intimate songs were so precious and fragile under the late-night stars that I almost daren't turn him up too far lest the magic burst. Having said that, the boisterous Lachlan Bryan set that followed was probably my overall festival highlight not least for the story that started with a reference to "...a famous Australian pop star. You've only heard of one. Yep, it was her" and the intro which ended "...and if there were any justice in this world, Garth Brooks would be living in a lodge at the end of Kim Richey's' driveway!" (audience cheers).
I
think I’m getting almost competent at this malarkey, in that there
were only a couple of incidents of note – one being where my short
term panic at the lack of foldback from the onstage monitors on
Saturday morning was quickly forestalled by my inspired reckoning
that the big On/Off button on the power amplifier at the side of the
stage should probably be depressed. The other was when the missing
output from the electric piano meant that the Mute button on the
mixer amp should not be. Still, it’s one up from that time I called
the site spark up on the walkie talkie to complain that I had no
power from the generator to the front of stage four-way and he
pointed out, with a somewhat meaningful look – more in sorrow than
in anger - that someone had unplugged the relevant socket in the
trailer in order to connect a phone charger...
There
are also the little things that you pick up along the way that help oil the wheels of the day. Only one
artist this year turned up without a lead, so having one to hand is important. A guitar stand on stage is
always very convenient for the busy guest, having a capo to hand certainly endears you
to a certain stripe of guitar player, and it turns out that a
colouring book and a set of crayons also comes in unexpectedly handy.
Some of these people are, after all, bass players.
My
post-festival blues were largely mitigated on this occasion however, by a hasty pack up and
run in order to appear on BBC Radio Cambridge (and Suffolk and
Norfolk and Essex) as an artist in my own right with Helen and The Neighbourhood Dogs on the Sue Marchant Show. Sue, a tireless champion
of folk, roots, country and all and any other sort of creative music
making is the sort of old-school DJ who invites people in to her
studio to play live, makes sure people know where to find you online
and in concert, gently guides the broadcast where it needs to go, and
carries a bag of CDs with her in case the central online server goes down and
takes the extant BBC jukebox with it. As she points out, she would
then be one of the few broadcasters in the country still able to put
out a show.
We
are to sit in between eight and nine in the evening and have been kindly invited to play a
couple of songs live in the fairly compact and bijou studio while we're there, to which effect we have decided,
naturally enough, to bring a vibraphone. Sue is not in the slightest
fazed by this, and deftly organises a six channel mix on the go
whilst simultaneously cueing up the next song, back-timing the fade
into the traffic report and organising a Facebook Live post. It’s
really quite the spectacle. We chat, we play, and Sue is audibly
enthralled by the vibes, getting Robert to give us the audio
equivalent of a twirl. After an all too quick hour, we are back
outside broadcasting house and agreeing that what might have seemed a
risky strategy (we did an old song that Robert had never played on
before as our opener) had really paid off.
“I
wanted vibes in Songs from The Blue House” says Fiddly, referring
back to a previous musical venture “But it never came off for some
reason”.
“Dad”
says Robert “I was four”.
