Tickets

We're really getting down to the final few tickets now...

Full Festival Tickets
Right now there are only 277 adult weekend tickets remaining and that is moving down pretty fast (adult weekend tickets are valid from Fri - Mon). We're certainly going to sell out well ahead of the festival.

If you're intending coming to the festival, please pick up your tickets as soon as you can as - once these 277 have gone, then that's it, no more will be made available.

Day Tickets
We no longer have individual day tickets left for Saturday, Sunday or Monday, but there are still a few available for Friday night (and obviously full weekend tickets are valid for all days)

Jez Lowe, Chris Wood & Mark Erelli 'We'll Hunt Him Down'

The fourth and final of the Darwin Song Project videos that we'll be uploading before the festival - 'We'll Hunt Him Down' came towards the end of the Darwin set and received a huge response on the night.

Here are Jez's notes on the song from the CD booklet....
'A fond pastiche of the American "outlaw ballad", inspired by a school-teacher friend in Pennsylvania, who in 2004 was reprimanded by his principal for alluding to Darwin's theories in a history lesson to a class of 14 year-old students'.

Twitter

As well as the blog, we've decided to use Twitter.
We set up the account months ago but it's taken us a while to decide to use it!

There are going to be two of us tweeting, maybe more if they fancy it (rather than just me on the blog), and it allows us to post updates that wouldn't normally make it onto here...I think the run up to the festival should be interesting as you'll hopefully get an idea as to some of the smaller jobs that go into making the festival work!

The link you need is http://twitter.com/shrewsburyfolk

Emily Smith, Stu Hanna, Jez Lowe & Rachael McShane - The Earl of Darwin's Farewell / Save A Place

Another one of the Darwin Song Project songs, written by Stu Hanna, Jez Lowe and Emily Smith, and performed by Emily Smith, Stu Hanna, Jez Lowe and Rachael McShane.

‘Save A Place’ is a plea by Emma Darwin to her husband, for him to remember her in little moments during his time at work. It contains and was inspired by the tune “The Earl of Darwin’s Farewell”, taken from Henry Atkinson’s 17th century North-East fiddlers tune book.

Boxfresh Organics

We're proud to team up with Boxfresh Organics again this year - we believe we have the best festival shop anywhere with a unique range of fresh food and provisions.

Boxfresh have now decided their range for this year and where they will source their stock from......this is hot off the press and straight from their website

Not long now until Shrewsbury Folk Festival, a huge highlight in the Boxfresh calendar. Building on the success of sponsoring last year’s festival we have upped the package this year and have moved from sponsoring the Village Stage to sponsoring Marquee 2 where there’s a whole load of topline acts performing over the weekend.

We’re naturally bringing back the shop after the rip roaring success and good time we had last year. This year we will double the floorspace (or should that be grassspace in a tent?) to accommodate a broader range of lovely products.

What we’re aiming at is a shop that will supply not only all the festival basics but also some really great local products at sensible prices. So in addition to the camp necessities such as loo roll, newspapers, sweets, tins of beans, toothbrushes etc., we’ll also have our own great range of locally grown organic fruit, veg, speciality cheeses and store cupboard items. In short we’re looking to keep as many festival goers as possible on the festival site without feeling the need to dash off to the supermarket (you do enough of that the rest of the year don’t you?)

We’ll have a big focus this year on a few key local food partners:-

Artisan breads from Gains Park Craft Bakery of Shrewsbury. In addition to traditional white, harvester and wholemeal, we’ll have a stunning range of bespoke craft breads covering ciabatta, focaccia and rye. Baked fresh overnight just for you and brought in fresh and warm each morning. Please form an orderly queue!

Speciality cakes from Baked For You of North Shropshire. A great range of goodies including flapjacks, fruit cakes and tarts. Ideal for taking back to the tent during that afternoon lull.

Dry cured bacon, speciality sausages and hams from Buttercross of Market Drayton. We’ll also have in stock the Buttercross BBQ pork pack for a tenner which is a great price for a whole lot of very high quality free range pork.

Organic milk from Welsh farming co-op Calon Wen (winners of BBC Radio 4’s Food Producer of the Year 2008)

We’re really looking forward to the festival and we’re proud to be associated with one of the nation’s premier live music events. What we bring along in terms of sponsorship and the shop is something really special that is probably not matched anywhere else in the country. Roll on August bank holiday weekend!

Mark Erelli & Karine Polwart

With the Darwin Song Project CD now finished, we're working on adding the edited sound to the video we took of the concert....we'll get through all the songs eventually.

'Mother of Mysteries' was written and performed by Mark Erelli & Karine Polwart, and here are Mark's notes from the CD booklet..

"Based on one of the most well-known passages from The Origin Of Species: "There is grandeur in this view of life … from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

FREE webcast!

This year, as well as putting the concerts on large screens in the main marquee, the Shrewsbury Folk Festival’s main stage concerts will be broadcast as a FREE live feed on our website.

We successfully used a multiple camera mix last year that was broadcast live on site to various screens – this year we will have two 10’ x 7’ plasma screens each side of the main stage, as well screens in artists’ reception etc.

For a few years’ Alan Surtees the festival’s director has been looking at ways for festival goers with very young children to still enjoy the evening concerts from their caravan/tent; and by combining the web feed with free onsite WI-FI for all, those who bring laptops etc will at least be able to enjoy some of the concert atmosphere.

The upshot of this is that anyone, anywhere in the world will be able to see the main stage of the Shrewsbury Folk Festival live and with perfect sound on their computers.

We’re pretty sure this is a first for any folk festival, and are obviously excited by the project – we’ll post timings and more details a little closer to the festival over the August bank holiday weekend.

Wi-Fi on site

We've toyed with the idea of having wi-fi at the festival for a few years now, but this year have finally taken the plunge and there will be FREE WI-FI access on site for festival goers.

We're still working out the final details, but the transmitter will be at the back of the main marquee and should cover a large proportion of the festival site....

We'll post full details on the blog, facebook and the main website when we have them.