Vintage Nostalgia Festival
Vintage Nostalgia Festival – Sunday 4th June 2023.
Hello viewers!
It’s been a while! What have we been up to since I last popped in?
Well, we recorded 4 video tracks for the awesome Bopflix Sessions people. The first track released was “Everybody’s Screaming” (a song we wrote about Screaming Lord Sutch). It has been viewed an astonishing number of times on YouTube and the numbers continue to grow. If you haven’t seen it yet you can check it out here - https://youtu.be/n6262baVMs4
We’ve also had some fantastic gigs, including a return to Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues in Central London plus our debuts at WildFest, Nells in West Kensington and The Boogaloo in Highgate amongst others.
That leads us to this, our second festival of the season, the brilliant Vintage Nostalgia Festival in Stockton, Wiltshire.
The day before the festival we get together at another gig’s soundcheck to run through some new songs we’ve been learning. One of which is specifically for festivals. A modern song that we’re doing a cover version of (we do a different one every year for festivals). This year it’s “New Shoes” by Paolo Nutini. A great song that also fits the vibe of us all wearing Converse All Star trainers. A band must have some unifying look, right? The rehearsal goes brilliantly, everyone having learnt their parts beforehand. We’re ready for the summer.
The day of the festival arrives, and Sandy and I head off nice and early with our beloved Poppy Popstar doggy. Traffic is okay on the A303, just a slight build-up of cars going into the Thruxton Motor Circuit. Even the traffic past Stonehenge is flowing nicely so we arrive in plenty of time.
However, there are no signs anywhere for artists so Sandy and I head to the normal car park where we assume someone will point us in the right direction. Wrong. Upon reaching the car park, one lone parking attendant rejoices “I know what you’re going to ask me!” when we stop to see how close to the stage we can get. We can only get as far as a gate at the corner of the car park apparently. We don’t think is right, but we don’t have too much to carry so we grab what we can and set off on a long walk through the entire site. We stop to say hello to our friends Gary and Debbie though! They were the kind souls who introduced us to this great event.
Having found the venue (the main marquee) we find out that we have indeed parked in the wrong car park, we should have followed the sign for exhibitors! Doh! That wasn’t particularly clear when we are, in fact, artists! Oh well, no drama, we move the car.
After a look around and a coffee, the rest of The TR5’s all arrive in convoy. Bang on time.
We set up backstage in the huge marquee that we are playing in. It’s very warm. There doesn’t appear to be too many people in the marquee watching the act before us though. That’s a bit concerning. They are very good, so maybe it’s just too hot!
When it comes to our turn the soundman is very thorough and does a fabulous job getting us all set up and line-checked. It’s all running about 15 minutes late but that doesn’t seem to be an issue.
“We should play outside when we start, to attract everyone in” Finn says to me as we kick into our set opener “Twenty Flight Rock”. “Great idea” I say, so off we go. Finn and I climb off the stage and wander around the dancefloor and at the opening of the tent. We needn’t have worried about the tent being empty though, because out of nowhere floods of people come in and fill the place up. The dancefloor is full too. Awesome!
We continue through our set with gusto, it’s hot but we endeavour to keep the masses entertained and on the dancefloor. “New Shoes” goes well and despite being a modern song we can see the audience singing along. Chuck Berry’s “No Particular Place To Go” goes very well too, despite tiring me out when I go onto the dancefloor for a full-on duck walk.
Then, as is always the case with these things, we reach the end of our set all too quickly. Our last song being the original “Everybody’s Screaming”. It’s always so great to see the dancefloor full and people singing along to one of our songs. It’s very humbling.
Having had such a great set and been received so well we depart the stage to rapturous applause. What a great event this is! However, despite running behind time (somewhere before our set they must have lost some time) we get called back for an encore and run through a rip-roaring version of “Roll Over Beethoven”. The dancefloor stays full, and we all leave the stage beaming from ear-to-ear. It’s been such a great gig!
We relax backstage as the next act prepares to get ready for their set and when we look out from behind the stage, we see that the marquee is now empty again. All those people had explicitly come to see us. We must be doing something right!
Thank you thank you thank you.
Lucky