Something Else in the Dean 2017

Something Else in the Dean 29 September - 1 October 2017

My third year at this great little festival located very close to where I am based a lot of the time. It's great to leave a festival and not have to drive for hours to get home or back to site or where ever I am based at the time. Although leaving was a bit of a mission but that story comes at the end of this piece!

Sometimes when writing about the festivals I go to every year I find it hard to say new things, I mean I love this festival, it's great I don't need to tell you every detail as you need to go and experience it for your self. One great new feature for this year was three brilliantly built compost toilets along with a urinal in the camping field. Such a great idea to have a urinal built onto the side so as you men can go and wee without getting it all over the seat. The toilets were kept in great condition all weekend, regularly stocked with toilet roll and sawdust and never once did I find wee on the seat!

Unfortunately I didn’t get to check out any new artists this time around and even missed a few I'd liked to have seen. The weather was not kind to us and rain on and off all weekend meant a wet and muddy festival arena and campsite. Not that it dampened spirits but when you have a warm dry van and your mates popping in sometimes it's hard to leave the home comforts!

I did get to see awesome singer songwriter, good friend and all round beautiful person Cara Means Friend, I saw Phat Bollard but didn't take my camera to that so no pictures of them. I saw the lovely Brewer's Daughter, also a good friend who played her folksy tunes on the pirate ship stage. I saw the superb Samantics, amazing hiphop loop station artist whose lyrics touch me when ever I hear them.

Festival organiser Gail played with her band, Muddy Summers and the Dirty Field Whores and they were really good as usual. At the end to mark 10 years of the Something Else tea tent, Woodlouse productions who had been at the festival with the very popular outdoor social network 'Twitface' presented Gail with a picture of all the 'Twitface' status updates from the weekend.

It's not often that bands I want to see clash at smaller festivals but sadly Mecurius Rising started only 15 minutes before Sporadics. I was running late and determined to get a bit of Mecurius but alas I had to walk past the stage where Sporadics were on and could not be dragged away! After Sporadics I went and saw Suzy Condrad, live loop station and beat boxing maestro who I was lucky enough to discover at last years festival. I love this lady's music and lyrics, go and check her out!

To end the Sunday night we had two all time festival favourites, Firepit Collective who came with live fiddle player this time and Tarantism who came with an ex band member doing extra vocals on some tracks. Both were great and a brilliant end to another good SEITD.

Oh and the mission to leave on the Monday... we were stuck in the mud and had to get towed out by no less that a small Sprinter van! Quite a sight seeing a 3 ton panel van trying to pull out a 8 ton truck. Luckily we were kind of parked on a slight incline so it was just a case of getting the wheels out of the bit we had been wheel spinning on. Our friends weren’t quite so lucky and had to wait for a 4x4 to tow them!

Below are a selection of photographs from the festival.