Our final gig of the weekend was a bit of a surprise. We honestly thought we would be lucky to get one person at the ‘Meet the Guests’ event. Partly because tickets were £6 (or included in the weekend pass) and partly because it clashed with the final concert of the weekend. But we had 8 people and a dog, all of whom sat and listened to us play and talk about our songs, our writing processes and other music related stuff – well, not the dog, mainly he wandered about desperate for someone to throw something, anything for him to bring back. He even came over and leant on Josie’s leg while she was singing at one point.
It was an acoustic, intimate and friendly event, with questions from the audience, and a lovely way to end our festival experience in Tenterden.
The venue is a bit hidden away and had no signage outside. It’s a small hall with a bar (closed) a little way down a passage next to the White Lion pub in the High Street – you buy your drinks from the pub and bring them into the hall. The entrance to the passage is narrow but leads to a free pub car park which is surprisingly large and had plenty of space. We tried having the room’s side door open but it was opposite the pub kitchen so a bit too noisy, so it was quite warm in the room – if it had been full of people it probably would have been unbearably hot and playing acoustically probably wouldn’t have worked either.
Bob the festival volunteer looked after the door and us and told us that he plays a blue plastic trombone and once carried a sleeping baby whilst playing – he is a story teller and gave us some suggestions in the audience book.
We sold 3 Cds, got 1 sign up on the mailing list and had 3 more entries in the audience book
Overall we had a great festival – the campsite was lovely, right next to the steam railway. No running water but they had fresh water tanks and portaloos. The festival office took a bit of finding when we went to pick up our performers’ wrist bands – it was next to the entrance to Waitrose car park opposite the public toilets.
We look forward to returning in 2024.