Day 5: Leeds
Welcome
Yesterday we performed at Live at Leeds festival.
What our room at Ibis Budget Derby lacked in luxury it made up for in availability. The beds may have felt like they were filled with straw but that didn’t stop Tristan and I putting away a good nine hours of sleep. While it has an average of 4.0 stars from 651 reviews, this hotel was given the full five stars by Google user Seriously? Seriously! who proclaimed “Good quality power shower, clean room, and efficient use of space. Would recommend to anyone for a short stay or transit”. I thought this was a nicely glass-half-full way of looking at this space, just the same way as the floorspace was half full by the time the beds were installed. The shower was really powerful though. Liz said she couldn’t operate her one at full power or risk it escaping the cradle and flailing around in a dangerous fashion.
After checking out of our room Tristan and I breakfasted across the carpark at a café called Been Coffee. I ordered a bagel with goat’s cheese, pesto, sundried tomato, and fresh tomato.
The drive was only a couple of hours. A38 took us past Derby and then hooked east to get us onto M1. We continued north past Sheffield and then took a bit of a squiggly route that brought us into Leeds from the east. As we pulled into Live at Leeds the first thing we saw was an impressive stone manor neatly planted on the hill overlooking the festival grounds. This was Temple Newsam, a Tudor-Jacobean house with grounds sculpted by Lancelot “Capability” Brown, famously known as England’s greatest gardener.
Everything seemed to be well organised in the back areas of the festival. There were temporary roads constructed of steel plating to provide traction for heavy vehicles climbing up the hill. There was also good signage, and traffic management.
They had very complicated systems for making sure the beer poured properly.
There was a strong, zombie-proof fence that lined the grounds, making sure no one slipped past security. (Hilariously, after our set a couple of fans managed to somehow sneak into the artist area to come and say hi to us).
We had arrived with plenty of time to spare, which was good as our stage was already running fifteen minutes late. The backstage was chaotic and cramped so we stayed outside as long as we could, putting our things together on the grass outside the van.
They couldn’t fit our green room next to our stage so it was placed at the next stage, down the hill. That didn’t matter anyway as they didn’t end up delivering our rider. There was a stage manager at our stage but still there weren’t any communication or instructions given to us. We had everything prepared for speedy changeover, a task which we had twenty minutes to execute. Or actually five minutes I guess because the stage was running late. It must have looked like a flock of sheep being released into a field, as our drum riser and guitar riser were wheeled out onto the stage by plentiful stagehands, none of whom know where anything was supposed to go. There was supposed to be a bass amp provided, and we did find a very large speaker cabinet, but no one knew where the amplifier was.
This is what the backstage of a festival looks like. This is a particularly tight example.
There were a few issues with ‘the patch’ (this is how signals from the microphones on stage make their way to the sound desk) but Gabe got it sorted pretty quickly and we had a few seconds to catch our breath before we got underway. It was a great set that we played. The crowd were having a good time, and this made it all the more frustrating when the stage manager told us to stop right as we got to our last song. There was a large boo followed by a big cheer as we awkwardly packed our gear away and left the stage.
While this was a disappointing end to what should have been a triumphant festival show, we consoled ourselves with the knowledge that we had done our best under the circumstances. Playing right after us us was a great band from London called The Big Moon, and watching their set cheered us right up.
A 3pm set meant that we had an entire evening off; a rare treat which we took full advantage of, paying a visit to a brewpub where I could write the blog accompanied by a comforting cask ale.
I’ll leave you a tasty morsel to chew on, Tristan’s video run down of the day’s events.