Truck Festival 2011

The Duke & The King

2011-06-10T10:06:47Z

You never forget the first time you see the Duke And The King. For me, it was at a half-full Wedgewood Rooms in Portsmouth during 2009. Aware that they were from the Catskill Mountains and that they were on Loose Records, noted for its Americana leanings, I thought I pretty much knew what to expect. Sure enough, the show started with what for a moment appeared to be regulation singer-songwriter fare from Simone Felice, ultra-cool in a Mark Lanegan kind of way. But within minutes, you’re confused, thrilled and entranced, as the other elements of the band come into play: Daring, discordant guitar from Robert ‘Bird’ Burke, Simi Stone’s gorgeous violin, and – the real killer – drummer Nowell Haskins‘ soaring, soulful vocals. When people asked me afterwards what they were like, all I could think of was “a cross between Neil Young and Marvin Gaye”. It’s inadequate but it gives you the idea.

Flash forward to now, and it’s been an amazing year for the band. Their album “Long Live The Duke And The King” featured in numerous 2010 “Best-Of” lists and Simone Felice (previously drummer of the Felice Brothers) has added solo stardom to his achievements. Following unexpected major heart surgery, he has completed two sold-out solo UK tours, been signed by a major and has become renowned for his extraordinary charisma and ability to captivate audiences. At Truck, this curious band of rebels (named after the traveling Shakespeare hustlers in ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’,) are bound to be a highlight because they specialize in killer choruses and audience singalongs. They’re pretty well bound to do their cover of Neil Young’s “Helpless” and it will be a massive “Truck Moment”. Can’t wait!

Words by Oliver Gray

Johnny Flynn

2011-06-01T13:51:52Z

When writing this, I looked to see if we had any previous text to adapt from Johnny Flynn’s previous performances at Truck, as he’d clearly played at the festival before, hadn’t he? Maybe in 2005? Somehow, however, it turned out that we’ve never managed to bring him to Truck, so it gives us great pleasure to rectify that and present one of the most talented songwriters in the country to our festival.

Johnny Flynn came to prominence amidst the alt-folk movement that’s already provided a lift to Laura Marling, Noah & The Whale, Emmy the Great and countless others. However, he’s more inclined to list classic playwrights as an influence, and indeed often appears on stage under the name Joe Flynn, to considerable sucecss. For Truck, though, we welcome him to the Clash tent as part of the Transgressive Records showcase. His ever-present backing band The Sussex Wit will provide a backdrop to his gravelly voice, as they play out his carefully-constructed songs strung through with as literate a lyrical sensibility as you’re likely to find this side of the Atlantic.

Wood Field at Truck, and congratulations to Robin!

2011-05-26T10:44:49Z

We’ve just about recovered from the most relaxing weekend of face-painting, felt workshops, glorious sunshine and beautiful music at Truck’s sold-out sister-festival Wood. Thea Gilmore, Willy Mason (backed onstage by his brother Sam, and Truck’s very own brothers Joe and Robin) and Eliza Carthy were joined by star-turns by the likes of Khaira Arby, Mama Roisin, Zeus, and Goodnight Lenin.

After setting it up four years ago, Robin and Joe had started thinking it would be fitting for it’s bucolic, environmentally-conscious atmosphere to be transported to Truck. With three small children between them (more on that later), the idea of an area like this at Truck has been growing for some time. So fans of Wood will be able to experience many of the same delights at Truck, while Truck regulars can get a taste of what Wood is all about.

WOOD FIELD

So it is we announce the WOOD FIELD as the latest addition to Truck 14′s goings-on. We’re having a few of our favourite musical turns of the past few years alongside some acts new to Truck and Wood.

Anybody who was in the Market tent in 2009 for the Non Classical-curated evening’s entertainment will be looking forward to Friday night. Gabriel Prokofiev will return to Truck to grace the WOOD stage, with other acts on the Friday night including recorder quintet Consortium 5, a capella group Juice Ensemble. There’s still more still to be announced for that stage.

Then, over Saturday and Sunday we welcome the Oxford Folk Festival‘s curation of the WOOD stage, with two of the most exciting new singer-songwriters out there Benjamin Francis Leftwich, and Heidi Talbot.

They’re joined by Heidi’s husband and acclaimed Orkney islands songwriter Kris Drever, the most talented Bennett of them all Katy Rose & The Cavalry Parade, as well as another perennial Truck favourite Rachael Dadd, the aptly-named 15-piece accordion orchestra No1 Ladies Accordion Orchestra, Dana & Susan Robinson, Pilgrims Way, Monument Valley, and yet more still to be announced.

Any of the late-night revellers who were at Wood, will be familiar with Kitstock, and Kit is bringing the tent down the road to Truck. Just like at WOOD, there may well be a few acoustic sets in front of the stove, so look out for that.

AND FINALLY…

Heartfelt congratulations to Robin and Megan Bennett, who welcomed a daughter into their world. Marcie Bennett was born at 9:30 last Thursday morning, and was already at WOOD by Friday evening.

Tunng

2011-05-25T17:41:57Z

Returning to join us after an outstanding headline set at Wood 2010, Tunng bring their joyous electronica-tinged folk to Truck for their only UK show of the summer.

The history of Tunng is typical of that modern sort of band: the bedroom-centred collective that has gradually crystalized into a focused touring band. Like local heroes Jonquil, they started off as a studio-project, the brainchild of Sam Genders and Mike Lindsay.

During a rapid creative explosion, the band’s music constantly evolved, releasing three albums in three years to critical acclaim. Meanwhile, Tunng’s live incarnation stayed roughly the same, constantly becoming tighter and tighter.

Gradually, Sam became a part of the live set-up but, drawn to other projects (including The Accidental and Imagined Village), he eventually left Tunng to pursue his own muse. This redefined the band’s sound, and live vocalist Becky Jacobs became as important a part of the band’s sound as Mike, and his new songwriting partner Ben Bickerton. After finishing the rounds of promoting ‘Good Arrows’, the band toured with Tinariwen and, learning a lot from the focused intensity of the desert-blues icons, shifted the sound to something that’s drawn as many complimentary comparisons to the pastoral glitches of Four Tet as it has to the experimental end of Hot Chip’s oeuvre.

We loved them at Wood, so we can’t wait to see them again on the (ever so slightly) larger Truck stage!

Philip Selway

2011-05-11T16:33:41Z

We are beyond excited to welcome a member of inarguable the biggest band to come from Oxford at our humble Festival. Phil Selway is obviously most well-known from his time in Radiohead, (formerly On A Friday, Curfew fans!) but his debut LP Familial has certainly set right any misperceptions that Radiohead rely 0n any one member for their perpetual ability to create and innovate.

Familial came about when Selway asked Courtyard Studios’ resident engineer and producer Ian Davenport to help produce some sessions of his own music. Then Selway invited Lisa Germano, Sebastien Steinberg, Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche and multi-instrumentalist Patrick Sansone to come and make the record with him. Yet despite the rock pedigree on show, Familial is as far from a rock record as you’ll get. But neither are its ballads defined by folk, but something much wider and more contemporary. Curiously, there’s very little defined drums on the record, with more percussive loops/textures. Sometimes the beats and instrumental colours are so subtle, it sounds like the acoustic air in the room is setting the mood. It leaves space for the lyrics, which clearly come from the most intimate of places.

Playing as part of the Bella Union day in our Big Clash Tent, there’s no way we could be looking forward to Phil Selway playing at Truck more than we are.

Exciting News From The Truck HQ!

2011-05-05T12:10:19Z

Exciting News From The Truck HQ!

You may or may not have heard about the amazing latest additions to our already golden line-up, so we’re telling you now!

Joining the likes of Gruff Rhys, Bellowhead, Graham Coxon, Saint Etienne, John Grant, Truck All-Stars, Philip Selway, Edwyn Collins, The Go! Team, Johnny Flynn and many more will be…

Young Knives, Liam Finn, Pete & The Pirates, Electric Soft Parade and a whole Blessing Force day with ODC Drumline (to see what they’re about, check out this video from BLESSING FORCE 1), Coloureds, Durrty Goodz, Rhosyn, Wild Swim and Solid Gold Dragons!

As well as that, this year Truck Festival has called all hands to the pump in order to make this our biggest and bestest ever year. Featuring Cabaret, Comedy, Theatre, Cinema and a cornucopia of other alternatives to the live music, there’ll be plenty for you, your friends and family to enjoy.

You can still get an Adult Weekend Ticket for under £100, making this your best bet for the best value mini-holiday that music lovers could wish for this year.

And, by buying your SuperTrucker ticket now, you’ll not only save a whole heap of money, but you’ll also be going to Truck Festival’s folkier, younger, greener, somewhat beardier brother Wood Festival (now only three weeks away!) - check the ticket info page

Edwyn Collins

2011-05-05T13:15:01Z

Edwyn Collins was at the forefront of the early ’80s indie scene with bands like the Nu-Sonicds and Orange Juice (‘Rip It Up And Start Again’, Simon Reynold’s history of the post-punk movement, took it’s name from Orange Juice’s biggest hit). After that came the worldwide genuine mega-hit ‘Girl Like You’. An Ivor Novello award followed, and with an increasing number of bands looking to the Orange Juice sound over the past decade, Edwyn had already become a legend of sorts.

Then, whilst recording comeback album ‘Home Again’, he suffered a massive brain haemmorhage. Much to everybody’s delight, he managed to return to the studio in order to mix the recordings, and in 2007, the album was released to critical acclaim and, in all honesty, relief. Since then, he’s released ‘Losing Sleep’, one of last year’s sleeper hits and a record that made it onto plenty of Album of the Year lists, and featured members of Johnny Marr, Roddy Frame and members of Teenage Fanclub, The Cribs, Franz Ferdinand, The Magic Numbers and The Drums.

Late last year, he also toured the act, and if reports of people dancing and crying in equal measure are to be believed, he’ll be bringing the house down come Saturday.

(photograph - Lawrence Watson)

The Go! Team

2011-05-01T16:23:26Z

One of the most unique, exciting and bizarre bands out there, the story of who and what The Go! Team could take up scrolls of writing in itself. A potted history, then:

There are two different Go! Teams. In 2004, Ian Parton sat in a bedroom and used all sorts of musical bits and pieces to create ‘Thunder Lightning Strike’, an album that took inspiration as much from G-Funk as it did Sonic Youth. It was released to international acclaim, end-of-year polls, a Mercury nomination, and all musical tie-ins (‘Get It Together’ is now living a second life as the theme music to the PS3 game Little Big Planet), and was one of the breakout albums of 2004.

Then came the second incarnation of The Go! Team, a six-piece band who took the recorded output as a starting point, from where they turned the whole thing into a raucous non-stop party. Fronted by hyperactive MC Nkechi “Ninja” Eganamba, this version of the band has toured all over the world, playing in Russia, Tasmania, China, and more or less any other country you’d care to name, spreading endless good vibrations in the process.

These days, however, The Go! Team of latest ‘Rolling Blackouts’ could be described as being a lot more similar to the live band The Go! Team. It’s party music for the party at the end of the universe, and suitably enough, their set will come close to the end of the weekend on Sunday night!

John Grant

2011-04-28T10:36:35Z

John Grant hadn’t been having a good time. He was working as a waiter in New York, living and drinking in a rough neighbourhood, and playing a few shows on the side after The Czars had split. He’d basically given up on music, on the life that he’d pursued for years with critical success, but to little financial benefit. His musical career could have ended there, had it not been for a few fans in Denton, Texas. Midlake had heard his music, and invited the singer to support them on a handful of live dates in New York. After that, it seemed natural to return to the desert to record an album.

Those sessions produced a bitterly nostalgic album. Wistful memories of candy stores and movie stars are dragged from the past and placed next to more recent memories of intolerance, rejection, and Grants painful adolescence as a teenager growing up in an evangelically religious household that viewed homosexuality as a sin.

I wanted to change the world
But I could not even change my underwear

Woven through John Grant’s critically-acclaimed debut ‘Queen of Denmark’ (MOJO Magazine’s album of the year 2010, countless other end-of-year lists), are lines like this. ‘JC Hates Faggots’ is the kind of pop song that could only be sung along to by people who don’t understand a word of english, as the playful melody is lists all the things that Jesus hates. Everything from the mundane (people who cut in line) to the more troublingly racist examples that follow.

Since then, things have looked up. He’s toured the world in support of the album to as rapturous a reception as the album received, often touring with Midlake, and joins us as the headliner of Bella Union’s curation of the Clash Tent.

Richmond Fontaine Acoustic

2011-04-27T10:11:27Z

Richmond Fontaine’s new album “The High Country” is released in September but visitors to Truck are lucky enough to catch one of just a handful of UK summer dates by Richmond Fontaine Acoustic – Willy Vlautin and guitarist Dan Eccles.

Playing brittle and evocative literate rock with lyrics that draw powerful and sometimes troubling portraits of life along the margins of the contemporary American West, Richmond Fontaine is the brainchild of singer, guitarist, and songwriter Willy Vlautin, who was born in Reno, Nevada but moved to Portland, Oregon in 1994, where he formed the band.

“The High Country” is their tenth studio album and completes a tendency that the band has virtually invented, namely the meshing of music and storytelling. Willy’s third novel, “Lean On Pete” has just been released by Faber and Faber in paperback, while his first, “The Motel Life” has just been made into a major motion picture filmed by the Polsky Brothers (Bad Lieutenant) and featuring Dakota Fanning, Stephen Dorff and Kris Kristofferson.

Recent projects such as “A Jockey’s Christmas” and “A Motorcycle For A Horse” have seen Willy’s song-cycles turning into mini-music backed stories, and “The High Country” completes the transition. In the words of drummer Sean Oldham, “It’s a gothic love story set in a rural logging community in Oregon. Something more than a concept record, it’s a novel-sized story set to music… a “song-novel”… and its pretty dark with romantic ballads, dialogue sequences, raw Northwest Garage rock and cinematic songscapes”. Three of the songs feature Deborah Kelly on lead vocals, known for sharing verses on the band’s iconic “Post To Wire”.

The UK has embraced the music of Richmond Fontaine and anyone familiar with them will see Truck as the perfect festival for them to play. Unsurprisingly, their music and lyrics demand attentive listening, swallowing audiences with tales of pathos, tragedy, humour, love and the travails of everyday life. Don’t miss them!

Words by Oliver Gray