This 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.”

This is not something that is unique to Jamie, I’ve spoken to many other independent producers and they’ve all acknowledged that there is quite a weight on their shoulders and much to keep them up at night. In reality, this is perfectly normal as it is the constant concerns that help make for a great event. I ask what lessons he has learned the hard way. Jamie provides the succinct and comical answer “make sure you order enough toilets. I won’t say any more!” This is funny but it does highlight a very important point, that if you are taking on a large event or festival you needs to think about the facilities you are going to offer your guests.

Toilets aside I wanted to know if he thought there was any thing else that  people overlook or misunderstand about music festivals? He is very honest with his answer “people seem to think it’s a massive money-spinner. It’s not. At least not with small, independent festivals it isn’t. We do it for the love. Large corporate events like T in the Park and Rockness are big dollar signs in the sky but smaller events like us find it really hard to wash our hands, let alone be bathing in champagne! Budgeting is a big deal.” This underlines that your heart and soul needs to be involved in events of this size and not taken up lightly, and once you are involved you need to keep your eye on the balance sheet; which is always a good rule of thumb.

Doune has found a new home for this year but what else is different?

“There’s quite a lot different about Doune this year” Jamie tells me, “the new location being the most obvious; it’s beautiful! Cardross Estate has some amazing (and giant) old specimen trees (think giant oak and beech) which are dotted all over the fields with an amazing view to the North side of the Campsie Fells. The other differences are more organisational, and they do mean that we’ll be providing you with a much better production this year, but the detail is very dull so I’ll spare you!”

When questioned about organisation and the “dull” stuff I ask if there is anything that he’d mention to other producers. “Never underestimate the power of the traditional poster” is his reply. An eye catching poster is also worth it’s weight in gold. It needs to grab the ticket buyer and give them enough information so that they can make an informed decision on whether or not to attend. You also need to say where the tickets are available. Brown Paper Tickets is happy to have been involved with Doune since the start and it was pleasing to hear from Jamie that it was Ed Stack of Ten Tracks in Edinburgh that recommended us for the inaugural festival.

Jamie tells me that “in the last four years I have had great service.” Thanks Jamie! We are happy to hear it!

Festivals are a great chance to see all sorts of acts so I was curious to find out who was playing this year. With a large intake of breath Jamie explains his booking approach, “I try and be as varied as possible with the line up while maintaining really high quality across the board. This year we’ve got a few fantastic festival acts like Bombskare & The John Langan Band, there’s weird and wonderful acts like  Zun Zun Egui & Stealing Sheep. There is also some great Scottish youngsters like Panda Su, Washington Irving, Randolph’s Leap and Paws. There’s a lot of amazing Psychedelia from Hidden Masters, Haight Ashbury, and Robyn Hitchcock, some heavier stuff from The Cosmic Dead, No Island and Bo Ningen and we’ve got the likes of Rebecca Vasmant and Hector Bizerk to lead you through to the early hours in our dance tent and if that doesn’t suit you we’ve got some experimental Jazz in the form of the Z’s and others. I could go on for a while!” Without doubt there is clearly something for everyone here. You can check out the full line up here.

The future is indeed bright for Doune the Rabbit Hole. We at Brown Paper Tickets are always keen to find out about new bands and pass the details on to our readers, so I asked Jamie for his musical tips, “Galoshins are a Glasgow act that are criminally overlooked and The Blue Ship (formerly the Brotherhood of the Blue Ship) are fantastic too.” Click the links and find out all about them.

To wet your appetite of what else you can expect, here are a couple of the other bands that will be appearing this year.

Paws play on the Friday and this is their song “Sore Tummy.”

The Pastels take to the stage on the Saturday. Here they are with their song “Check My Heart.”

Doune the Rabbit looks like it is all set to be another great weekend. You can get more information from their website and you can order your tickets now from here.

That’s all from us, we look forward to seeing you back here next week for more music based banter.