Review: Beautiful Days 2009

Guest post by Michael Barrett

I’m sat on the 2pm train back to Wakefield after a weekend that flashed by. The carriage is empty, my MP3 player is dead, so I’m stuck thinking about the past few days and trying to shake off the vague hangover that’s rattling through my skull.

Let’s begin at the beginning, as a man far wiser than me once said. Beautiful Days is a three day festival in Escot Park, Devon. Organised by folk punk band The Levellers, it’s not attracted the popularity of the bigger festivals like Glastonbury or the Leeds/Reading Festivals, and it’s definitely more of a trek for me; Google Maps tells me that it’s nearly 270 miles away.

So why did I push myself onto a crowded southbound train on Saturday morning, bearing the boredom and the cost of the six hour train journey down, missing a full day of the festival (thanks a lot, work schedule) and braving the notorious British weather, or at least trusting it not to pour it down and leave me soaked in the middle of a muddy field?

Possible reason number one: I’m an idiot.

Possible reason number two: I’m a sucker for punishment (I went in 2005 with a lot of people I knew from the interwebs).

Possible reason number three: I’ve yet to find another festival with the same atmosphere, great people, music, food (a thousand times the food) and beer. Oh, and Frank Turner was playing.

Being of Yorkshire ilk, the first stop I made was the beer tent. I caught up on the festival news: Hawkwind had been fantastic, Richard Thompson had broken his finger and had been replaced by Seth Lakeman, the weather forecast was looking good, the beer was £2.60 a pint. I had many £2.60s in my pocket, and eventually the late night/early morning combined with the guest ale Beautiful Daze took its toll on me. I half-remember waking up during The Saw Doctors and The Pogues. From later accounts, Shane McGowan had made the same mistake in the pre-gig beer tent as me, and fumbled through the set; introducing a song they’d long since played, forgetting the rest of the set list, mixing lyrics up. Get that man a coffee.

A long nap, a cup of tea and a veggie sausage sandwich later, I was ready to face Sunday. We started off with the Fabulous Good Time Party Boys. “The ex-guitarist from New Model Army plays with them,” I was told, “they’re slightly weird but it’s a good show”.

As I watched a frogman and Darth Vader sit down at the keyboards and one of the Thunderbirds take his place at the drum kit, I realised my definition of “slightly” is way off. I also learnt that “weird” is a synonym for “awesome”. I think I also developed a crush on female vocalist Emmylou, an unnecessary addition to this article that will probably haunt me in ten years when the future wife Googles my name and finds it. It could be worse. I could have said the bloke in a nappy.

Frank Turner plays the main stage

Million Dead frontman turned acoustic musician, Frank Turner is no stranger to Beautiful Days. After last year’s performance on the Big Top stage, this time the powers that be put him onto the main stage, and he and his band rose to the occasion remarkably. Barely on his third solo album, he’s already becoming the stuff of legends, and his live set reflects the honesty and power he puts into his records.

I could say a lot about the Levellers themselves; that their final night’s headline set was fantastic, that they performed with energy and enthusiasm, that the crowd were wowed by the music and pyrotechnics. However, I can’t; I didn’t watch their set, and barely heard One Way as I wandered around the stalls, sipping tea, buying sweets and casually chatting to the stall holders. Once the last few fireworks had been set off, I wandered back to the beer tent. Old habits and all that.

Michael shat this out after the festival

The festival is definitely inspired by the politics of the Levellers, from the music, to the people it attracts, to the ethos it promotes. They encourage the fair trade options, have left-leaning icons in every year’s lineup, they even have a biofuel-powered arcade tent. Oh, and they promote local trade by selling ale from the nearby Otter breweries in the beer tents. Always good.

The atmosphere was only broken on the Monday morning, as I packed my tent up in the rain that had suddenly started sometime in the early morning. Another veggie sausage sandwich (I swear I’m twice my original weight now) and cup of tea kept my resolve up, and I started the trek back to Feniton’s train station, via the pub of course.

So in the end, it’s a mix of things that brought me back (and will keep bringing me back) to Beautiful Days. The music is more diverse than other festivals I’ve experienced; the crowds are less rowdy and the toilets are ten times better kept than Leeds Fest; they don’t make you jump through hoops to get tickets; the train journey gives plenty of hangover recovery time. I just wish they wouldn’t have the Levellers headlining every single year. Anyone would think they ran the festival…

…yeah, I guess idiocy is a factor for me after all.