Beacons Festival 2012

Skipton is a traditional historic market town in North Yorkshire, located about an hour’s drive from Preston. It contains a rather fine 14th century castle which was Yorkshire’s last Royalist stronghold when it was besieged during the English Civil War. When we heard about a new festival taking place near the town at Heslaker Farm on the Funkirk Estate, we thought it was well worth a foray over to check it out.

The Moor Music festival was held in Ilkley, West Yorkshire from its inception in 2006 and was a non-corporate sponsored event and had a considerable green eco slant and featured local bands. The shindig moved to Heslaker Farm for the 2009 and 2010 editions before rebadging itself as the Beacons Festival for the 2011 event. It remained there until 2015 before morphing again into a short-lived tri-city event in Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester called Beacons Metro.  

However, the 2011 version which we purchased tickets for was hit by unseasonably inclement weather resulting in its cancellation and our tickets were carried over to the August 2012 festival. We managed to purloin some digs at the hugely inviting Woolly Sheep pub located on Sheep Street which is known locally as the ‘Woolly’. It is owned by the Timothy Taylor brewery, and they stock some very fine beers.  

Woolly Sheep pub. Image Credit c.yell.com

We had a day ticket for the Saturday so on arrival in Skipton we had a wander round the town followed by a hearty lunch before heading over in a taxi to the site. It was a very rural setting and quite a small site literally attached to the working farm, but a 1000 times smaller than what I would envisage the Glastonbury site to be!

You could wholly understand the previous year’s cancellation as despite a batch of decent weather the ground remained a quagmire and there were not many dry seating points on the grass. On the upside though they rather excitingly had the first real ale tent I had seen at a festival before it subsequently became a staple tent item at future events.    

There were two main stages, namely Stool Pigeon and the Noisey/Vice stage and we gravitated between both areas.  On the forenamed stage we initially saw a singer songwriter called Tom Finian.  The next act was 2:54, a decent shoegazey act from London comprised of the Thurlow sisters who had just recently released their self-titled debut album.

An hour later we saw the Japandroids set. They are a punky act from Vancouver and were touring their touted second album Celebration Rock and they created a rather fine racket; and they remain in circulation to this day. They were followed by Obaro Ejimiwe, who is better known as Ghostpoet from London. He has been twice Mercury Prize nominated and I enjoyed his unique sound.   

We saw more acts over on the Noisey/Vice stage, the initial one being Best Friends, a group of pals who met at university and provided some noisy guitar fuzz. Next up was Plank from Manchester who had a 60’s space rock feel about them.  Following them was Paws from Scotland who have now produced four albums of off-kilter guitar tunes in the similar vein to Swearin and No Age. Their first ever show at the Stereo Café Bar in Glasgow in 2010 was supporting the Dum Dum Girls.

Beacons Festival site. Image Credit blogspot.com

We saw Archy Ivan Marshall, a singer/rapper who has many pseudonyms, but that day played under the moniker King Krule.  My favourite band of the day was Swim Deep, a woozy dream pop band from Birmingham, who were later cited as part of the Digbeth-based B-town movement. They had a really nice vibe to them, though the sound could have been a tad louder for my tastes.

The final act we saw was Eagulls from Leeds who were in the post punk mould and the lead singer George Mitchell had an element of Ian Curtis in his stage persona.  They subsequently split in 2019 with George then becoming a painter and starting a new musical project.

We managed to book a taxi back to the digs and reached the pickup point by stumbling through dark fields which reminded me of the early Wickerman festivals.

Manchester Venues 48 and 49 – Yes

In the early days of my Manchester gig going career in the mid to late 1980’s there used to be a requirement for a designated driver on the trips because of the sheer inadequacy of the train timetable. The most visited venue at that stage was my favourite ever Manchester venue International 1.

The route used to take us from the M62 through Prestwich visiting a choice of Holts’s houses the White Horse and the Friendship Inn at the traffic lights, then a couple of Boddingtons pubs The Grove and the Brewers Arms underneath the Boddington’s brewery and adjacent to Strangeways Prison. Once we had traversed through the city and China Town, we could stop for a final drink at either The Garratt on Princess Street or the nearby Lass O Gowrie on Charles Street.

The Lass O Gowrie is a grand old pub in the traditions of other city pubs Peveril and the Peak and Britons Protection. The walls are decked with period pictures of Manchester and it is a real ale haven and they used to serve their own beer called Log 36 and Log 42. There is a decking area at the rear of the pub overlooking the River Medlock originally opened by comedian Johnny Vegas.

For a short period in the 90’s I used to watch Coronation Street and on one anonymous Tuesday night pre-gig we wander in to see the whole cast in the pub. The chap who played Jim McDonald who used to lean on the Rovers Return bar was in the exact same pose thereby encapsulating life imitating art! On that theme I know there have been bands who reference film characters and events. I recall a Japanese death metal band called Keyser Soze named after Kevin Spacey’s enigmatic character from Usual Suspects and another act called 1.21 Gigiwatts from Back to the Future!

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Jim McDonald leaning on the Rovers Return bar. Image Credit The Mirror

In the Corry script they would often say they were going to the new restaurant on the precinct, so in this regard the new venue on the precinct would be on the next corner from the pub! In September 2018 a former auctioneers house and printers press was converted into a four-storey music venue called Yes. Commendable local promoters Now wave were the instigators in this venture.

It houses two gig venues, serves tidy looking pizza in the ground floor bar, and has a roof terrace containing a NASA approved sound system which can be spied from the train running between Oxford Road and Piccadilly stations 

I first visited the 1st floor venue Yes Pink Room on 31/01/19 where the décor matches the name. It has a capacity of 250 and it has a cosy feel to it. The band in question were Swearin who are a lo-fi Philadelphia four piece. They had first crossed my threshold when I picked up their terrific sophomore album Surfing Strange released in 2013, which comes recommended.

The band is led by alternate lead vocals from Kyle Gilbride and Alison Crutchfield, the later also has a solo venture called Waxahatchee, who somewhat confusingly sometimes support Swearin on tour. I thoroughly enjoyed their live performance. My other visit there was to see Art Brut who were not in the same class and were very disappointing fare. 

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Manchester Yes Venue. Image Credit getintothis.co.uk

On the night we saw Swearin they finished quite early, so we headed downstairs to the Yes Basement and managed to negotiate a half price entrance fee to catch the end of soul singer Otto Hardman’s set. It is a decent venue in its own right, more in the lounge core mould and has a smaller capacity of 60.