We were delighted to be invited back to Rochester Sweeps again this year and were booked to play The City Wall (wine bar) Stage and Boley Hill Stage, which is positioned between the Cathedral and Castle. The weather in early May can be tricky but Sweeps was blessed with a beautiful warm sunny day when we were there. Artists playing the street stages can unload near the high street, but have to park about 3/4 qtrs of a mile up a hill. We are able to transport two guitars, a cajon, clarinet and other accessories using a foldable sack trolley, but it is still quite hard work. We have to travel across East Sussex and half of Kent but on a nice spring day it’s a lovely journey. Sweeps is always fun, with a great energy in Rochester High Street – the whole town comes out. Historically The chimney sweeps of Rochester had one day off a year and this festival remembers that, so there were plenty of people with blacked up faces and chimney brushes walking about.
City Wall Stage. 5th May 2024.
The City Wall Stage is set up behind the City Wall wine bar, about half way along of the High Street and when we arrived there with all our gear the stage was occupied by CJ playing cajon and singing mostly covers with two great guitarists, one of whom was blind. There was a good crowd of people watching but as time was getting on we started to worry that they were over running the schedule. When playing these tight turnaround gigs it’s really important that everyone sticks carefully to their timed slot or else set lengths get squashed – it’s really disappointing when you go to a lot of effort to play a gig to find your 45 minute set has been reduced to 20 minutes. We needn’t have worried though as the reason they played on was that an act had cancelled and everything was moved on.
As well as being a very busy performer, CJ runs the City Wall Stage and she does a great job with the PA. A bonus for us was Jim’s cousin, her friend, and her husband came along to hear us and we were able to spend some time having a drink and a chat with them before loading up and heading off to the Boley Hill Stage for the second gig of the day. Although there was about an hour between gigs, that soon disappears. The crowds weren’t as large as previous years and there weren’t very many morris sides dancing in the High Street, so we could fairly comfortably make our way – especially as the organisers had placed stewards in the middle of the high street encouraging people to walk to the left.
For this type of gig, we carry a few CDs and merch, but theres no time or space to really promote it so we didn’t expect to sell anything. We did however remember to print off a QR code and place it at the front of the stage so that anyone taking photos or videos and find us online.