Day 11: Sheffield
Welcome
Yesterday we returned to The North to perform at Tramlines Festival, in Sheffield.
Though it might be a fine venue for a wedding reception, Sudbury House Hotel did not offer a complimentary breakfast, so we decided to look elsewhere. We ended up heading into Oxford and cramming into a small Mediterranean restaurant called The Olive Branch where I enjoyed a falafel wrap and a side salad.
Sadly, this was the morning we had to farewell Amanda who was heading back to London. As well as being great company she made herself very useful over the past few days and I’m sure you will see the evidence of that in some of Tristan’s video content. We waved goodbye as Amanda walked off to the train station and then Berend started us on our three-hour journey to Sheffield.
We left behind the blue skies of Oxfordshire and drove into the part of the country where it was raining. Tramlines festival seemed to be bearing the brunt of this onslaught of weather, and when we arrived, we were met by an enthusiastic and sodden man who showed us to our dressing room and briefed us on the evening’s events. The festival grounds were in Hillsborough Park, a few miles northwest of the city centre, and the organisers have skilfully made use of the adjacent Hillsborough Stadium to use as an organisational base and a nice dry location for artist hospitality. We were housed inside the south stand, and although our greenroom was just a table and chairs inside an office partition, they had provided a nice rider, and we could also sit in the empty stadium stands, watching the rain drizzle down on the thirsty pitch.
Tramlines festival professes to be named after the city’s tram network, a system that was shut down in 1960 in favour of buses, but thankfully revived in the mid 1990s. As a lover of public transport I thought that this was a brilliant name for an urban music event, and even more so because the city’s network is called the Sheffield Supertram. These Supertrams, are actually tram-trains, which can operate in a light rail capacity, and also utilise pre-existing sections of heavy rail where it is beneficial.
📷 Andrew Cryer
It is at this point that I introduce an unexpectedly early Art Corner segment into today’s blog. Located near the reception on the ground floor of the Hillsborough Stadium’s South Stand, this piece illustrates a jovial post-game mood, a peek into the locker room of Sheffield Wednesday F.C. at their most candid.
Gallery: Hillsborough Stadium South Stand Foyer
Artist: Unknown
Our set was during dinner time, so we opted for an early meal and headed up to catering which was upstairs behind the corporate boxes. Then with food our bellies and caffeine coursing through our veins we made our way back to the van and steeled ourselves for what we knew would be a damp experience. There was a short drive to our stage during which we got a glimpse of the festival grounds. There were a couple of large stages at one end, a few large tents, and a handful of carnival rides dotted around for when the multi-sensory experience of watching music in the rain is not enough. Our tent was a twin-poled number, red with white chevrons, and a bit smaller than the past few we had played in, but nevertheless a fine piece of temporary shelter.
Berend parked the van and we unloaded under a steady drizzle, our clothes and our equipment getting quite damp as we carried everything along a slippery steel ramp and up into the tent. The backstage area of this particular tent could probably be described as inadequate. Owen’s main area of responsibility during our setup is to assemble the in-ear-monitor rig, and to do the patch, but there was not a single square foot of space for him to do these things behind the stage, and unfortunately our equipment can’t be assembled in the rain. Our dream of a smooth, easy, changeover was in the wind, but what we did still have was a team, an adroit group of operators, cobbled together from all walks of life, who could come together in a pinch and achieve the impossible. The impossible turned out to be quite achievable in the end, with Owen working ferociously fast and Berend pitching in to help set up the drums, and when it was our time to go out on stage and set up, we did it quickly and calmly, and we were ready to play with twenty minutes up our sleeve.
The backstage.
Bad luck if you were a non-male wanting to use the bathroom at our stage.
Gumboot-wearing Sheffielders turned up in droves to watch our set, a fact that had us happy and surprised, as we weren’t sure if anyone would survive the muddy bog and make it into the tent. It was full house though, and they were a lively crowd who knew how to enjoy a day out. We played our final show of the tour with gusto and loved every moment of it. It was a fine way to close out this short but busy European leg and we all felt like we were beginning to get a handle on how to approach these wildly varied festival experiences.
In this next segment called shoe check we call in on the footwear of members of our tour party to see how they have fared in the muddy festival conditions. Who do you think came out on top in this competition? Leave an answer in the comments below.
We were out of there by 8.15, heading to the hotel to relax and have a celebratory drink. After checking into my room, I came back downstairs to find that a wily Jonathan Pearce had persuaded the hotel clerk to let him plug his laptop into the lobby TV so we could watch the Formula 1 race. It was a fine way to spend the evening and we all enjoyed the chance to relax into an armchair and watch a couple of hours of this moderately entertaining sport.
Taking over the lobby.
As someone with a professional interest in breakfast photography it is always fascinating to see how other artists approach this daunting task.
A huge thank you to these three guys for being a great hang and making this tour function extremely smoothly.
And of course here is the latest installment of Tristan’s video blog.
I will leave you with a second installment of Art Corner, this time featuring a piece that hangs in the stairwell of the Mercure Sheffield Parkway Hotel.
Artist: Unknown
Gallery: Mercure Sheffield Parkway Hotel Stairwell