Winsterfest – Review
Well the dust is now settling on the hills and dales of Derbyshire, where the faint echoes of enthusiastically delivered Rock melodies can still be heard if you listen very hard and use your imagination just a tad. As the ghost of Winsterfest gradually fades into the favoured memories of those that came down and made it such a fantastic little festival in the peaks.
TTB had been looking forward to this one for some time and from the start it was proving to be one of those events that you will dine out on for some time to come.
The Festival began for us on the Thursday, when I got a phone call from Axle Rose, or Gavin as we know him now. The Guns 2 Roses Tribute were playing on the same night and actually would be headlining the opening day, however, due to a mishap with “The Van” their equipment was now awol and so needed to borrow bass amp, rhythm amp and drums. We immediately offered to assist, offering up my Marshall. JCM 2000 Triple Lead valve amp for Slash to use and Glenn offering up his Bass Rig. Unfortunately John had to leave straight after the gig and was unable to help with the drums, but after a few calls and a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, Gavin managed to secure the drums from the band Junction who were playing the next day.
So all packed up and ready to go on the Friday afternoon, having kissed the missus ta-ra, I jumped into the car and was looking forward to my weekend of rocking, when, oh bugger. A very load grinding noise was coming from the front suspension of my car…. trying to pretend it wasn’t happening I drove it a few hundred yards down the road before deciding that it might not make it to Winster, and maybe I wasn’t quite ready for dying for my art. So turned back and investigated. Poo-eey the bloody front spring has only collapsed and resembles one’s guitar leads when you get ’em out of your bag.
So some frantic calls to Glen for a solution resulted in me concluding that we could not get all the kit into his motor, although we knew that this would serve as a backup plan, then my mate Tony turned up and on hearing my plight, immediately offered the loan of his estate car. Thereby saving the day, thank you Tony – a great chap.
I finally arrived at the Winsterfest site, and could see loads of revellers milling about and going about their business, putting up tents, having some grub, and meeting and greeting to re-establishing old friendships and acquaintances. I parked up and was immediately greeted by Glen who had arrived shortly before me. and then Lynne made herself know and gave me the special Lynne welcome, which made me feel immediately at home.
My thoughts were now on where I might put up the half man tent I’d brought along, but I need not have worried, Glen showed me the accommodation that Lynne had provided and it was the luxury caravan next to the Marquee, absolutely fab, we felt like rock stars and well looked after, needless to say we are so grateful to Lynne for all she has done for us.
Anyway as we were on first there was little time for socialising just at the mo’ and we needed to get our stuff out of the car and set up. The stage was well proportioned and stretched pretty much the whole width of the marquee, the sound guys Geoff and Conner were already set up with a pretty impressive rig with monitors running the from edge of the stage and an array of mic stands and cables festooning about. Glen had already got most of his kit set up and he helped me get mine in, during this time Mick arrived with Kirsty and the kids soon followed by John and San and then Mark, who on taking in the electric atmosphere also began to load in.
The stage was covered with carpet made up of some metal framework, giving it a slight bounce and a general slope from left to right as it followed the contours of the scenic dale it was placed upon. When would lead to some interesting events later when we started to play.
All set up and amps tested, Glen and I decided to tour the camping area and meet some of the festival goers, introducing ourselves and explaining what was happening at kick off and just generally getting to know everyone, we had a great time doing this and really got to know a lot of those at the festival by this time. Most said that they would come down to the marquee for kick off.
Anyway, 6 pm was soon here and we were ready for the off, and as promised we noticed that the crowd was swelling and we could recognised nearly all the faces looking to us. It was great and we thrashed through our first 4 numbers and intro without a break, delivering almost 20 minutes of Rock without taking a breath – we have never done this before – and were pretty much knackered by the time we got through it. But it was worth it, when we looked up we could see the marquee was now getting close to full, or we reckoned that most of those on the site were now in the tent. Brilliant stuff – we went on to deliver the rest of our set which seemed to go down well judging from the crowd reaction and before you knew it it was over – we could have played all night with an atmosphere like that, fantastic, the last time we had a response like this was when we headlined the opening night of Rock and Bike last year, the only difference being that we felt we now knew all of those cheering us on and like to think we had become friends.
During our rendition of Rosie, I decided to leap off the stage in my usual manner, not realising quite how high it actually was, nearly losing my kneecaps in the process, and doing my best to stay upright managed to get through the song, giving the nice lady at the front an opportunity to strum my strings in the process. Continuing to the back of the audience I stepped into a depression in the ground which launched me backwards across the tent and I though, this is bad, but then a nice chap stopped me and save the day, thanks again chap.
Anyway after the gig we packed down in record time and I met up with my brother Phil who had come down for the weekend and secured one of the Miners Welfares famous burgers – yummy.
Mick and John had to leave shortly after watching the Led 3 and me, Mark and Glen watched the rest of the show. We left mid afternoon the following day for other commitments, but then Mick came back with Kirsty for the rest of the event, and had a great time.
We all had a great time and would like to thank Lynne and everybody that made is such a memorable event. See you all soon.
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