Day 10: Abingdon
Welcome
Yesterday we performed at Truck Festival, in Steventon, Oxfordshire.
Ibis Cambridge Central Station had their breakfast restaurant on the first floor, and when I say the first floor, I mean the first floor above the ground floor. This was a pleasant, generously windowed space which looked out over Station Square, and I found a spot to enjoy the view and take my time with a two course start to my day. The hot course featured a hash brown, cooked button mushrooms, a roasted and herbed tomato, a vege sausage, a smear of avocado, a dab of HP sauce, and a slather of Dijon mustard. The cold course was a bowl of fruit salad sprinkled with granola and a jar of natural yoghurt.
The plan for the morning was to do laundry while Berend found a place to get our damaged tyre fixed. Two large machines were pressed into service to deal with the fact that we were on day 9 of the laundry cycle, with dirty clothes taking up the bulk of our suitcase space. We left the washers to do their work and spent the next couple of hours browsing a number of spots such as charity shops, antique shops, cafes, and organic grocers. The bargain of the day was found by Jonathan who picked up a shiny silver clutch in which he plans to store all the rechargeable batteries we carry.
I didn’t find any bargains, but I did walk a few blocks to examine the Carter Bridge, whose gradual arched deck carries pedestrians and cyclists over the tracks and platforms of Cambridge Rail Station. It is a cable stayed structure, with a central tower supporting a through truss that contains a roadway with pedestrian and cycle lanes. Built in 1989 and ironically named after a city councillor who was a central figure in a conservative campaign which targeted cyclists as a major road safety problem and even enacted a city-centre bike ban, this bridge now exists as part of an ever-growing network of cycling infrastructure in Cambridge, the city with the highest proportion of cyclists in England.
The weather-proof tunnel which reportedly feels like a greenhouse during the hot summer months. Yesterday it did a fine job of protecting me from a light drizzle.
I returned to the laundromat to find Liz closely monitoring both our driers, checking the hot clothes for dampness, and adding an extra coin when necessary. Ten minutes later everything was done and scooped into our laundry bags to await sorting later in the evening. Berend returned with the van and a disappointed look having tried at all three of the open tire shops in town and finding them all booked up. We had no choice but to get on the road anyway so we began our three-hour drive that would take us from 90km above London to 90km west of London, where on a farm just south of Oxford is an annual music event known as Truck Festival. A common misconception is that the festival’s name comes from its early years when the main stage was constructed from three flatbed trucks. The truth comes from Robin Bennett, one of the festival founders who said it “the name actually came from a compilation CD I picked up, 'Ten Trucking Greats', the soundtrack of the movie Convoy” (Starring Kris Kristofferson and Ali McGraw). While I haven’t managed to track down a compilation with this exact title, I am happy to take Robin at his word, and I did track down a Spotify playlist with the songs from the official soundtrack that user martin. richard-gb has selflessly put together for public consumption.
While these truck stages are well and truly gone from the current festival experience, we can rest happy in the knowledge that trucks are still well and truly involved in the logistical side of this four-day event. Our stage, lights, and PA, all contained within a huge blue tent, would be immobile and helpless without trucks, a fact which is perhaps a more fitting tribute to this underappreciated servant of the arts than is naming your event after a haphazard motorised bandstand.
It was a miserable day when we arrived at the festival grounds, and for a change we were glad that our stage would be in the shelter of a tent. An access road lined with non-skid metal plates carried us safely through the site which by this point in the day was beginning to contain more mud than grass. At the accreditation hut we were stopped by a classic festival character, the over-zealous security guard who has been left in charge of traffic-management for this sector, and may god help you if at any moment you have your vehicle in a place of his disliking. He beckoned and forcefully stopped us, and after explaining why we couldn’t stop our van at the spot we had stopped to talk to him, we were directed to reverse a couple of metres to park in a spot seemingly right in the middle of the roadway.
A soggy day at Truck Festival.
We made it down to our stage soon enough, though, and found that while the bathroom facilities consisted of three sordid portaloos, and our green room was on the other side of the festival, at least the backstage was well organised and running to time, and the workers were all very friendly and helpful.
Our large team had to split up now as the band had a pressing promotional appointment, so we left the unloading and setup in the capable hands of Gabe, Owen, Berend, and Amanda, while we were whisked off in a golf cart. From the few glimpses we got on this short journey it looked like a wet and muddy experience out there for the festival goers. This seems to be a common enough experience in this country that everyone is fully equipped to deal with the conditions, but we talked to at least a few people who were experiencing flooded tents. By contrast, none of us had brought a raincoat, and I was highly focused on trying to keep mud off the top of my sneakers.
We arrived at a tent with a bar in one end and a stage at the other, small compared to then tent housing our stage, but large enough to seat around 100 people either on the grass or on a luxurious bale of hay. This event was a festival gameshow, a quiz hosted by a comedian where we would compete against another band for trivia supremacy. The band we were competing with were an indie rock act from York called King No-One, and the quiz was in large part structured around UK-centric general knowledge and music questions. While we did okay in the first round, which was a crowd participation round that involved us guessing the song intro they were humming, the subsequent rounds felt like we were playing UK trivial pursuit (a surprisingly common board game in NZ holiday homes) and were left stranded on two points to King No-One’s fourteen. Fair play to them, though, they played extremely well and we humbly accept our crushing loss.
Our stage setup, ready to roll on.
Back at our stage the setup team had been hard at work, and we returned to find our equipment already in place on our risers. All we had to do was get warmed up and ready for our performance. At 7pm we went out and played a punchy 45 minutes to several thousand people gathered inside our weatherproof fortress. They must have been glad to have a respite from the rain and we were glad to have an audience that camps out in these conditions to see their favourite bands. The sound on stage was great, and it felt like we had played our best show of the tour to date.
This photograph is by Amanda Cheng.
📸 Owen McGarry
Gabe mixing on his favourite console, (actually tied for first place) the DiGiCo Quantam 338.
📸 Amanda Cheng.
Afterwards we packed down and ate a quick takeaway dinner while standing around the van, and then we all piled in for the drive to the hotel. There was the tail of a wedding reception with some strong embers still burning when we arrived to check in. While we waited for a free staff member a procession of people in white shirts and mauve dresses marched back and forth between the hotel bar and the dining room. Eventually we found our rooms and the sorting of the washing commenced, a task that took place in three separate locations, each of which ended up with a good collection of single socks thanks to our mixed laundry load. We ended the night with a screening of Spice World, a film about a working group of musicians and their life on the road, which felt like a fitting watch for this final stage of our UK tour.
Sudbury House Hotel, a fine venue for a wedding reception.
Last but not least, here is Tristan’s latest video journal.