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oudon Wainwright III was virtu- ally unknown when he played the club tent in the early 1970s, singing Dead Skunk with his full range of facial expressions, eccentric mannerisms and overwrought irony. The audience went wild, the cheers reverberating around Cherry Hinton at such length, Loudon was immediately marched off to the main stage, where he did it all again to a larger audience, trig- gering another ecstatic response. His long- standing love affair with British audiences began from that point.


I’ve since been to Cambridge more times than I care to think about, living through the infamous deck chair wars and the annual struggle between those happy to watch the world go by, blowing bub- bles, sprawled out on their blankets with their Harry Potter books, and the fervent throng at the front doing all the leaping and whooping.


So many memorable landmarks… beatific Joan Baez admirers fleeing for the hills when blasted out of their reverie by the hardcore beats of the wonderful Mar- tyn Bennett, in what tragically turned out to be one of his last live performances. Nick Cave being mesmerising, captivating, fascinating and terrifying in equal mea- sures with his set of murder ballads. Julian Cope leaving the audience bemused, baf- fled and bewildered with his frankly bonkers meanderings. There was an elec- trifying performance by Ry Cooder; there was Rocking Dopsie getting the whole place jumping with zydeco overload; Lucinda Williams having a tantrum and stomping offstage when she saw the bat- talion of photographers in front of her; the Alan Stivell entourage mowing through the crowds in a Mercedes van tak- ing a short cut to the stage.


There were the drunken rants of Alex Campbell; the magnificent Steve Good- man belting out City of New Orleans; Rhi- annon Giddens blitzing everyone as a force of nature dashing from main stage sets to inspirational children’s workshops; Ray Davies demanding the stage be moved to a different angle; Joe Strummer playing a glorious set and then disappearing from backstage as fRoots tried to grab him for an interview, shortly before his death as it turned out; and, last year, a beautifully gnarled set by Patti Smith.


There are myriad golden memories… of Lonnie Donegan, Booker T, Arlo Guthrie, Afro Celts, Planxty, Laura Marling, Mumford & Sons, the McGarrigles, The Pogues, Seasick Steve, Natalie Merchant, Kris Kristofferson, Rokia Traore, Hedy West, Nick Lowe, Emmylou Harris, Doc Watson, the Imagined Village, Flaco Jimenez, Bo Diddley, Jean Ritchie, Rev. Gary Davis, John Cooper Clarke, Donovan, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, the Chief- tains, Pentangle, the Dubliners, Odetta, the Waterboys, the Clancy Brothers, Jake Thackray, the Strawberry Hill Boys, Peggy Seeger, Young Tradition, Sandy Denny, Richard and Linda Thompson, someone called Ian A. Anderson and, famously, in its inaugural year, Paul Simon.


All human life – and some inhuman life too – has gathered at Cambridge over


the years. It’s amusing now to recall how the Cambridge mayor accosted the first Cambridge director Ken Woollard, a fire- man, to demand what he thought he was doing bringing all those dirty hippies into his city; while the head of the parks department was equally distraught about the prospect of hordes of the unwashed trampling on his precious grass.


For every triumphal festival, there have been plenty of disasters, mostly when peo- ple have looked at the success of Sidmouth or Lorient or WOMAD or Cambridge – which was itself partly inspired by George Wein’s industrious work establishing the influential jazz and folk events which had a massive impact as a tastemaker and shaper of youth culture at Newport, Rhode Island – and thought, ‘I’ll have some of that.’


They’ve come and gone in ambitious venues like Syon Park, Kempton Park and the Chorley July Wakes festival, Lancashire at the back of Charnock Richard Services between Junctions 27 and 28 on the M6. Disasters all. The rock world can doubtless point to even more epic disasters, but they are events which nevertheless have left a salutary message to all get-rich-quick pro- moters that the only folk festivals destined to survive are those that build gradually and naturally through an organic process.


And even then it can be fraught with problems and unforeseen issues, often involving Acts of God. You need determi- nation, innovative ideas, endless research, goodwill, knowledge, great organization, an army of volunteers and a bottomless pit of luck to make an event successful… and even then there are no guarantees. One of the festivals I have most enjoyed in recent years is Folk East (see elsewhere this issue), way out in the wilds of Suffolk, which, despite arming itself with most of the above, struggled through its early years, losing pots of money following its 2012 launch. But, with an open-minded policy and a refreshing willingness to entertain mad ideas, sometimes bizarre initiatives and the energetic patronage of the Young ‘Uns, it has managed to create that much- sought-after individuality and a unique selling point.


The holy grail for any folk-oriented festival, of course, is the youth market. During his involvement with Sidmouth Folk Week, Steve Heap worked hard to engage a youth audience, in conjunction with Laurel Swift, with the establishment of Shooting Roots, on a mission to inspire and involve young participants in folk arts. It worked, too, to an extent, although Heap contends that while it has energised and encouraged young performers to get up and play, it hasn’t had a residual effect on the age of the audiences, which still generally veer towards the greyer end of the market.


“The audience for folk festivals isn’t depleted, they just don’t attract young people. I remember having this discussion at a marketing meeting of Towersey in the seventies… how are we going to find young audiences? Then, the people we were chasing thirty years earlier started coming because the festival scene was inhabited by older people of their own age and they now had the disposable


income to attend. I go to a lot of non-folk festivals each year and see thousands of teenagers because they like the way they are run, they provide the kind of music they like, and they can meet their own age group there.”


“Most of the rock and pop world is run for profit, of course, and if it doesn’t make money, it closes. The folk festival scene is alive and well and is mostly run by volunteers who have the passion and dedi- cation, that’s the difference. With festivals like the Big Chill, Latitude and Wilderness, the big headliners are not why a lot of people go. Wilderness (at Charlbury in the Cotswolds) is a brilliant event, yet I could- n’t tell you a single artist who played there. You are ducking and diving around lumps of trees and around every corner you turn there’s something else going on… street theatre, hot tubs, poetry...”


“Bearded Theory (in Derbyshire) is another great festival, which has grown from two hundred people to fifteen thou- sand, and is run very successfully by a guy who is a quantity surveyor in his day job, but who has this enormous passion and enthusiasm for music and who draws no distinction about musical genre. There’s a jazz element, a folk element, a rock ele- ment and all sorts.”


“And one thing that can make things happen is a commercial attitude and we can learn a lot from it. Last year Babybel, the cheese company, chose Towersey to launch a new organic product because they realised that people who go to festi- vals would be interested. Micro-breweries are popping all over the place and would be desperate to come and sell two or three barrels at a festival. It just needs a bit of vision and a business-like attitude. When I got involved in Sidmouth it was dying on its feet and it took ten years to turn it around but we did it.”


here are others operating with a different sort of approach. The Just So festival is a family- oriented event in Cheshire set up by Wild Rumpus in 2009 to engage people in all facets of the arts – music, literature, poetry and dance – in a woodland environment, involving work- shops, visual arts installations, plenty of interaction and top-notch coffee and jack- et potatoes.


T


Back in the past we went to festivals in a spirit of adventure and discovery to find and fall in love with new acts playing music we’d not heard before and which we would subsequently pursue into clubs and concerts. Nowadays, festivals rely – with distressing predictability – on the tried and trusted, where surprises are few and far between and the same names recur on every festival poster. One of the results of which is that enthusiasts see fes- tivals as a one-stop shop to see their favourite artists and don’t feel the need to go and see them in folk clubs.


Interesting programming is a key problem. Festival directors will tell you they have tried booking new, unfamiliar names playing different styles of music and nobody turns up, so why blame them for sticking to what they know works?


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