The Shrewsbury Folk Festival Travel Bug

Thought you might like to read an excerpt from a press release that's been sent out today.....

Oswestry Family Win Shrewsbury Folk Festival Tickets Thanks to Transatlantic Treasure Hunt

An Oswestry family will be paying their first visit to Shropshire's biggest music festival this year after winning a geocaching challenge set in America.

Ken and Pat Tomkins won weekend tickets to the sell-out Shrewsbury Folk Festival after successfully retrieving a travel bug from Washington DC as part of the global craze where people search for hidden caches using GPS systems.

The travel bug - which is a item that can be moved from cache to cache - was originally left in Memphis, Tennessee by festival director and keen geocacher Neil Pearson when he attended the North American Folk Alliance Conference in February 2008.

It was then discovered and moved to a hiding place in downtown Washington. Mr and Mrs Tomkins, who have geocached across the UK as well as in Egypt, Goa and Peru, eventually caught up with the travel bug when they visited their daughter in April this year and brought it back to the UK.

They will complete the travel bug's journey of more than 4,200 miles when they go to the festival at the West Mid Showground from August 28 to 31 with their 16-year-old grandson James.

For more geocaching information head to http://www.geocaching.com/

SOLD OUT!!!

SOLD OUT!!!

That's it folks. As of around 20 minutes ago we sold our last pair of tickets.

Thanks to all of you who are heading to Shrewsbury in a couple of weeks, we hope you have a great time!

T-Shirt #2

This is the first of the fitted ladies shirt, it's in a dusty rose colour (officially 'Heather Rose').

We have these in S, M & L

All the shirts were taken to our July committee meeting for everyone to look at - people loved the shirts. The other comments from that meeting are echoed in the response to the first shirt blog from a couple of days ago.......so we went away and ordered a second ladies shirt that arrived here earlier today. Will post pics of the alternative ladies shirt this week.

Workshop Programme

We've now finalised our workshop programme for the festival, workshops start at 10am on Saturday and they run right through to Monday afternoon.

So if you're interest in learning Orkney tunes with The Chair, joining in vocal workshops with the Spooky Men, or even walking away from a FREE recording session with a fully mixed CD then the details are all here

T Shirt Design #1

We have a good number of shirts this year, we'll show you them all here on the blog over the next 10 days or so....here's shirt #1

Mens Charcoal (sizes Small - XXXL)

Washed black colour, front image is centred on chest (17cm width)

New Darwin Song Project website

The official release of the Darwin Song Project CD (Amazon, Play, iTunes etc) is 31st August, and in anticipation of the release the project website has been redesigned.

The new site is a permanent record of the whole project, and photo galleries, videos and full background information.

The eight artists gather together again at the festival on Saturday night for a complete performance of all the songs from the songhouse.

Details on picking up the Darwin CD ahead of the festival and general release date are available on the website.

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.

SFF Tune workshops 2009

This year Izzy has organised two tune workshops, one aimed at beginners and and one at improvers.

From the Tune Workshops page of the main SFF website link you will find downloadable tunebooks and supporting materials.

The Improvers Session follows the same format as previous years where we will play any set of tunes requested from this year's book.

The all-new Beginners Session has nine well known tunes and accompanying audio files so you can play along and practice the tunes before the workshop.

As always, our aim is not to teach you the tunes on the day but to give you common ground with which to enjoy each session. Enjoy!

Those who've attended these sessions over the last couple of years, will remember how friendly and accessible they are, and how those who've never had the confidence to sit in on a session in the past have sat in, played and loved every minute of the experience.

Have a look at the tunebook, listen to the MP3 samples, practice a little, and then join us over the weekend!

Breabach - School's Project Year 2

We’ve just completed year two of our three year Heritage Lottery funded school project where we take musicians into school for a full week to explore the folk traditions of Great Britain.

Year one saw The Demon Barber Roadshow, and this year we looked at Scottish traditions, and had fantastic band Breabach in Radbrook Primary School for a week, with a final concert in the Theatre Severn on Friday 19th June with 30 children from the school.

The band performed a concert exploring the dance, music and song of the Scottish tradition, and throughout the concert they were joined on stage by the 30 children who had been working with the band all week – the children demonstrated Scottish set and step dances, traditional song, and 10 children played traditional tunes on whistles.

It was a fantastic week for the band and the school, but especially so for the 30 children who worked with the band over the week.

There will be a full report and pictures of the full week our website in the coming month.

Richard Shindell - The Hive

The hundred people who packed into our first small show at The Hive in Shrewsbury, were treated to a world-class performance from Richard Shindell.

In the late afternoon he held a songwriting workshop that saw him explain how some of his songs had come about, from how tricky last verses had just fallen into his lap through good fortune; to how his newest song, 'Abi's Gone to the Country', had been written in a couple of hours in Florence only days ago.

The sound for the evening was a perfect as could be imagined and Richard held the audience for 2hr 5mins with a superbly varied and engaging set.

Those fortunate enough to be in the audience will never forget the atmosphere of the room - it genuinely was an evening of real magic.

We're already looking into other shows in the same venue...we'll keep you posted.
Photo courtesy of Alan Surtees

Darwin Artist Video Interviews

Folk magazine website Spiral Earth have just listed video interviews with each of the Darwin artists (Chris Wood, Karine Polwart, Jez Lowe, Mark Erelli, Emily Smith, Rachael McShane, Krista Detor - not sure where Stu Hanna's video went!)

http://www.spiralearth.co.uk/video/default.asp?channel=/video/darwin.xml

These videos were recorded on the Monday of the songhouse week, and are excellent interviews that show the thoughts of the artists in the middle of the songwriting process.

RADIO BROADCAST TONIGHT
Radio Devon are broadcasting a Darwin programme this evening (Thursday 11 June, 7pm - 10pm) where you have the chance to hear some of the songs from the Darwin Song Project.

It's likely there will be between 8 and 10 songs broadcast through the 3 hour programme, with most being played after 9pm.

It will be available to listen live from 7pm here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/

Darwin Song Project - MP3 samples & pre-orders

THE CD
The mixing of the CD is now complete (mixed by Stu Hanna), and earlier today
the disc and artwork were signed off and sent for manufacture - we should
have finished copies around June 12th - as soon as the disc arrives in stock
then all pre-orders will be fulfilled.

There are details of the CD, along with MP3 audio samples of every track on
the Darwin Song Project website

We're now taking pre-orders for the disc on the Darwin website (paypal
only), if you'd prefer to pay by credit card or cheque, the disc is also
available from Fish Records

We also have limited quantities of the fantastic Darwin Song Project brochure -
this is only available direct through the Darwin website.

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CONCERT
The artists all gather together again in August 2009 at the Shrewsbury Folk
Festival, where they will perform the entire concert again on Saturday 29th
August.

Individual Saturday tickets have now sold out, but weekend tickets that
allow you entrance to venues for the whole weekend are still available; if
you'd like to see all 8 artists on stage performing the Darwin Song Project
concert then please pick up your tickets sooner rather than later as it's
almost certain the festival will sell out in advance, festival tickets

Darwin Song Project - Clock of the World

We're getting close to sending the Darwin CD off to be manufactured - just the odd tweak to audio here, an edit on the pack design there and we'll be done......we expect to have finished retail copies here by July.

In the meantime, here's a quick peek at one of the songs 'Clock of the World', written by Krista Detor and performed by Krista, Karine Polwart, Rachael McShane and Emily Smith.

The video and audio were recorded at the Darwin Song Project Concert in Shrewsbury on March 19th 2009.