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The Mid-Week Beat: This Summer’s UK Music Festivals

NorthwalesWith the weather finally picking up in the UK and with positive energy of Murray Mania rippling across the country, we can now think positively about what else the summer has to bring! One of the regular fixtures of summer is the music festival, so this week the Mid-Week Beat is offering a peek at three of the festivals coming up.

With one in Scotland, one in England and one in Wales hopefully you’ll find one close by. Each festival brings different sounds to their appreciative audiences. These are well organised festivals that are sure to be around for some time to come. In fact, one has already clocked up an impressive 40 years!

Check out the listings and dates, book a B&B or buy a tent and get ready for a UK summer of fine music.

Friday, 12 July to Sunday, July 14th I LeeFest – Highams Hill Farm – Surre, England  At Brown Paper Tickets we love to work with community projects that have a DIY mentality. This is why it is such a pleasure to be selling tickets for LeeFest this year. This is a festival that started from humble beginnings with the right mindset, principles and ethics. It has now become a major player in the annual festival calendar winning “Best Independent Festival” in 2012 at the Association of Independent Music awards. LeeFest has certainly come a long way from starting in founder Lee Denny’s back garden with 150 people, whilst his parents were on holiday. This small community has grown over the years and now the festival will run over 3 days in 2013 with the community swelling beyond 3,000 attendees.

Despite the rise in numbers the organizers are keen to keep the same atmosphere. As the numbers have grown so have the demographic. The younger crowd has grown to be a real cross section of the population, throwing their youthful energy into the mix and making this such a unique event. Not wanting to sell out to big sponsors and investors Leefest raised over £50,000 crowd funding through Kickstarter this year so that they can continue to grow and remain sponsor free. Some of the acts appearing this year include Noisettes  Delphic, King Charles and The Other Tribe to name but a few. The full line up can be found here. You can also follow all their news on Twitter at @LeeFest

Here are Noisettes with “Don’t Upset the Rhythm”:


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The Mid-Week Beat: Doune The Rabbit Hole 2013

DounerabbitThis week, the Mid-Week Beat catches up with Jamie Murray who is Director of the independent music and arts festival Doune the Rabbit Hole. This festival brings unusual and exciting musical acts and artists together in the beautiful Stirlingshire countryside for one weekend each summer.

“How did you start producing a festival” is the most obvious, but also one of the most interesting questions. After all wouldn’t everyone want to have their own festival! So, how did Jamie start? He was bitten by the bug whilst living in Glasgow and helping friends with their small gigs. Indeed he was so bitten that him and a few friends thought it would be a good idea to host a festival!

Jamie says: “It was more of a dream than a reality but then we just thought “Why not? It’s doable, so let’s do it!”

This energy and enthusiasm is definitely needed to put on a festival and the “build it and they shall come” approach has worked well for Jamie and his crew as they move into their 4th year in 2013.

As with all music festivals there is much to plan for and much work to be done. I asked Jamie what the most challenging thing was about doing an event of this scale? “In all honesty” Jamie says, ” it’s definitely the worrying. In reality everything will be fine – you know everything will be fine but you still worry. You worry about whether you’ve made the right choices of acts, worry about if you’ve got the right food, worry about what the program looks like, worry about whether anyone will come, worry about the weather and a million more worries.”
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