Guildford Beer Festival
Guildford Beer Festival - Friday 14th June 2024
We’re playing Guildford Beer Festival tonight and it’s a new one on the gigging calendar for us. It all takes place in the grounds of Guildford Cricket Club and we’re told to expect between 2,000 and 3,000 people in attendance.
Sandy and I arrive and proceed to drive straight past the gate which gives the artists access to the stage area. It wasn’t particularly obvious! We turn around and find the gate at the second time of asking. Buzz is already here and shows us where to park. There’s plenty of space and we can get right to the backstage area. Perfect!
We unload our equipment into the backstage area and say hello to Harry Leo. He will be starting off the musical proceeding tonight. It’s not long before Harry starts so we head out front and are amazed at just how busy it is. The beer tents all around the edge of the site and the field in the middle are all packed. Amazing, considering it is still early on a Friday evening.
Before long Ted arrives followed swiftly by Eddie and Rusty. Our free beer / food tokens are swiftly divided up between the band members and we relax and enjoy a set by our friends ‘The Nefarious Picaroons’ who are up next in the evening’s musical entertainment. We always enjoy gigging with (and watching) these guys. They are fabulous people and play awesome ‘low-down-dirty-stomped-up-pop-skiffle’. They’re pretty unique. Tonight, they play another cracking set and warm the crowd up nicely, with dancing aplenty. We like these guys.
Having walked around and met friends that have come to see us, we have soaked up the atmosphere, seen that the crowd has swelled even more and now it’s time for our set.
We have plenty of time to set up which is always nice. Sometimes at ‘festival’ gigs it can be a real rush, but not today. So, pretty much bang on time we launch into our new opener of ‘Telstar’ morphing into ‘Lucille’ and we’re off and running.
We play several new tracks tonight, including a brand-new original called ‘Showdown At The Ace Café’ (about a real-life event) which will be on our second album (oh yes, our record label has given us the go-ahead to record and release a follow-up, coming in 2025!) and it all goes great. The swelling crowd has gravitated closer to the stage and dancing continues throughout our set. Eddie does his party trick of playing guitar behind his head and everyone is having the most amazing time. We finish in time and are hollered at to play an encore. We play ‘Slow Down’ and it’s fair to say that nobody does slow down! What a great event. Great venue, great crowd, and great organisation.
There’s just time for Sandy to purchase some brownie cakes with our leftover tokens before we load up and head off into the night. Thanks Guildford Beer Festival.
Lucky