Tag: The Orielles

Preston Venue 60 The Ferret – Part 1

The Preston Ferret has been a jewel in the crown for catching live music in the city for many years. It is situated on Fylde Road opposite the University of Central Lancashire Student Union building and for around a decade was a sister act to 53 Degrees when that venue was located across the road.

It opened originally as the Mad Ferret in 2006 by taking over the site of Preston’s first steam powered cotton mill, owned by local businessman John Horrocks way back in 1794. The first owner Frazer Boon introduced live music to take place on most nights including a Tuesday open mic session and the busy schedule of over 200 gigs a year, many of them free of charge, remains to this day. In 2013, a new landlord took over and removed the ‘Mad’ from the name and it simply became the Ferret.

The old Horrocks Mills Centenary building located on New Hall Lane. Image Credit flickr.

It survived the troubling Covid years by staging sit down safe distance gigs. Despite that its very existence was thrown in considerable doubt when it was unexpectedly put up for sale in 2022, however a crowd funding initiative was launched and the sale price of £795k was raised to save the pub. I for one was ecstatic at that news as these small venues remain essential to the lifeblood of the music industry, especially in regularly bypassed backwaters like Preston.  

It is an archetypal grungy and extremely noisy venue and that just makes me revel in it even more, and it was a handy 15-minute walk from where I lived at that stage. For many years, it was my most attended venue as I have visited there 42 times for live music, many other times just for a beer with no music witnessed. That total has just recently been matched by Academy 2 in Manchester, so therefore as of today (01/03/2024) it remains my joint most attended ever venue. Many times, when visiting there I have run into other Preston musos, Rachael Beattie and Nick Godkin spring to mind here.

The Mad Ferret days. Image Credit Ents 24.

Idles and the Orielles have graced the stage there, but I will relay two other tales in relation to the venue. In 2011, the promoter booked in a young Ed Sheeran who in between the announcement and the actual gig released his debut single ‘A Team’ which flew up to No 5 in the charts. Now, I do not personally understand the appeal of Mr Sheeran, but fair play to the lad he honoured the date and crashed at the one of the audience’s house and played them a personal set there.

My biggest missed opportunity was Jason Lytle who played shortly after the breakup of his band Grandaddy, of whom who I am a huge fan. For some inexplicable reason I did not attend and sincerely hope I was doing something very worthwhile instead!  

Jason Lytle cogitating on a new tune. Image Credit YouTube.

My first attendance at the venue was in August 2007, a week before I travelled northwards for my one visit to the excellent Connect Festival at Inverary Castle. Uncle George and I met Gill after a PNE match and visited the noodle bar that was located at the Ringway end of Ormskirk Road where I mentioned a gig at the Ferret I had read about the day before in the Lancashire Evening Post.

Thus, we wandered down to investigate and the band in question was Slippage from Seattle from whom the driving force was Alison Maryatt who has also been in Rocket Surgery and recorded as Allison in Wonderland. They were in the grunge vein and were excellent though I have found that sourcing any of the material today from any of those acts is rather challenging as there are only very sparse outputs available. 

Around a year later I saw a band called Pencil In who supported the headliners Ivan Campo. The main act are a folk trio who formed in 2006 when they met at the University of Central Lancashire. They have had several 6 music sessions and their single ‘The Great Procrastinator’ was featured in the soundtrack of the TV series Skins. 

In 2010, I witnessed Victorian Dad, an upbeat folky band from Wigan whose driving force is David Rybka. They supported singer songwriter Daisy Chapman who reminded me of Jonie Mitchell. She has been an on/off member of prog band Crippled Black Phoenix and has toured with Howie Gelb of Giant Sand, who interestingly have just announced their first British tour for 9 years.

Warrington Festival 2021

This is a particularly exciting blog for me to pen as is it is the first one that involves attending gigs after the fateful March 2020 date. This was not quite my first post pandemic gig but details the first festival I attended when we were allowed to do so again! This year’s Warrington Festival was pushed back from its original date to 04/09/21 but despite the autumnal date the weather gods smiled on us.

I had looked at the Warrington event previously, but this year Marcus and I decided to make an appearance to catch the Saturday bill. Transport options were weighed up because as you know I never drive to a gig and the most feasible was train there and taxi back.

The local train was fine but the Manchester to Warrington leg was extremely busy resulting in us being jammed in between carriages with a worrying lack of mask compliance. It was a huge culture shock and felt more claustrophobic than normal due to the COVID connotations. It was such a welcome relief when the door finally opened at Warrington Central station.

Warrington is a place I have rarely visited despite it being handily placed on the West Coast main line and I always link it geographically with the shopping hell that is IKEA. I can only recall one distinctly average night out years ago and my abiding memory was the plethora of Greenall Whitley pubs!

We sallied over to the venue of Victoria Park, about a 15-minute walk from the station. En route, we grabbed a comfort break in a Wetherspoons hostelry, though no supporting drink was purchased as a protest against their rather shameless Pandemic approach to their staff. As we departed, we noticed there was a Green Day covers band playing at an outdoor stage in an adjacent pub Postern Gate, we listened to one of their jaunty tunes, then headed onwards.

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Warrington Postern Gate. Image Credit tripadvisor.co.uk

On arrival to the site and due to my permanently guilty expression I was obviously subject to a full search, bringing back memories of regularly being refused entry to nightclubs when I was younger! It was a busy site, but it was very well proportioned with three stages at good distances from each other.

We spent much of our time at the Big Top stage. The first band we witnessed was the Big Moon, an all-female 4-piece from London who have previously supported the Pixies on tour. They cut a gentle engaging presence and when they played a Fatboy Slim cover they nearly had me in floods of tears. It wasn’t that track, it could have been any song, it was the realisation at that point that I was back doing something I love after the horrendous period we have all been through. I managed to recalibrate, have a slurp of my overpriced beer and everything was back on an even keel!

Continuing the maudlin theme because as I pen this article, I have just heard of Mark Lanegan’s untimely death at the age of 57. I must say this one has hit me hard, with the same resonance of Grant Hart’s passing, as I was a huge fan of Screaming Trees. I have read his brutal unflinching autobiography detailing his troubled soul and addictions and was fortunate to see him live four times. However, his legacy will live on with his utterly unique vocal delivery and stellar albums such as Dust and Bubblegum. 

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The idiosyncratic Mr Lanegan. Image Credit malapu-pro.com

The next band was the much-vaunted Murder Capital, the post punk group from Dublin. They didn’t quite cut if for me as their music was somewhat dour and directionless, I much prefer their city counterparts Fontaines DC. They were followed by the Gang of Youths from Sydney, Australia. I had been privy to some of their material beforehand and placed them firmly in the Triffids bracket thereby having decent expectations. They had their moments, but the lead singer David Le’aupepe loved himself a little too much, not even in a semi-ironic way!

We grabbed some food and began chatting to a young engaging couple from Stoke. A worrying aspect of the conversation was that they had no firm plan of how they were going to travel home at the end of the day, I wonder where they are now!

The Viola Beach stage was the next port of call where we had earlier seen Lona. The headliners were the Orielles from Halifax and despite their main vocalist Esme Dee Hand-Halford losing her voice early in the show their slightly wonky intelligent sound was as enjoyable as ever.

As we had walked round to the entrance earlier, we had heard the unmistakable summer sounds of the Coral on the Main Stage drifting over the perimeter fence. We caught a smidge of Sam Fender and the days special guest Jake Bugg.    

The main headliners were James and we headed down closer to the front and caught most of their set before heading off to our taxi rendezvous. The traffic on the Warrington streets was chaotic and as a result we were relieved to eventually find our ride. Unfortunately, he then made a wrong turn and diverted us down the M60 instead of the correct M56 route adding an extra 20 miles to the journey. Fair play to him, he took it on the chin and no extra fee was incurred and I subsequently arrived home around midnight.