How to Build a Festival

We recap and learn about Rockaway Beach with new guest Ali, and talk about our resolutions for 2025 and what we’re doing with the podcast this year

We run through our favourite music from 2024, our top gigs and what’s going on our playlist at the start of 2025.
Thanks for listening this year, here’s to a great 2025 - we can’t wait to share what we’ve got in store

Cat and Rach are joined by Lee Martin, who talks all about the journey of starting and growing a new festival over the course of over a decade, shares his advice for building our festival, and talks through his newly released book from the incredible story of developing Lakefest
https://lakefest.co.uk/product/festival-of-love-and-pain/

We talk through our manifesto for our festival, find some things we still need to agree on… and we’ve been nominated for an award!
Vote for us here…
https://s.surveyplanet.com/vyhvggua

The team get together to work through progress with planning our festival, what we’re learning and some of the forward steps and setbacks we’re experiencing. We also talk about some great gigs we’ve been to lately and what we thought of the new and kind of the same Glastonbury ticket process

We’re back just in time for Glastonbury sale day, and we talk to Leo from On the Meadow Festival to hear all about the first edition of the event, and what he’s learned from putting on his own festival

We were very lucky this week to have the chance to meet Oliver Jones, co-Festival Director of Deer Shed Festival, a superb and long running independent festival in Thirsk, in the north of England that starred HTBAF favourites CMAT, deadletter, Jessica Winter, James Ngonda and Personal Trainer in 2024. Oliver talks to us about what makes Deer Shed unique, the challenges facing independent festivals, and gives plenty of great advice and food for thought for those thinking about starting something new.

Our unofficial End of the Road recap - the last summer festival of the year and there’s lots to talk about, including performances by Bonnie Prince Billy, CMAT, Malice K, Jalen Ngonda, Master Peace, Snooper, Brown Horse, Phosphorescent and more.
The team get the opportunity to DJ and meet some of our friends from the world of festivals, and take inspiration from the brilliant community of this festival

The gang are excited for End of the Road, and run through what we’re looking forward to including Bonnie Prince Billy, Jess Williamson and Holiday Ghosts. We talk about the Oasis reunion and our days at All Points East over the Bank Holiday weekend

Our Green Man run through - what we loved, how the festival is evolving and how we dodged the diablos. We talk about the Wishbone, the new Rising Stage, the brilliant artists we saw including Getdown Services, Big Thief, Sampha, Royel Otis and more…