Arts & Culture

Trowbridge Village Pump Folk Festival

Friday July 24 to Sunday July 26

www.villagepumpfolkfestival.co.uk

With only a few weeks remaining, the organisers of the 4th Edition of the Village Pump Folk Festival, held in White Horse Country Park, are putting the finishing touches to what promises to be the best festival yet.

The main stages, club stage and children’s programmes are now complete with hundreds of performers booked to appear from early on the Friday afternoon to the very last thing Sunday night. This year, festival patrons Show of Hands will be making an exclusive live album of their Saturday night concert – this will only be available to those in the audience that night! This marks a unique first for the Festival (credited as the first festival Show of Hands “cracked”) – and a nice payback for the Pumpers who create such a fantastic atmosphere that our performers revel in!

In a festival of firsts there will be premiere performances by the pride of Scotland – twelve piece band Treacherous Orchestra; Welsh ambassadors Calan; Jim Moray & Sam Carter’s loud folk rock band False Lights and good time party bands such as CoCo & the Butterfields and Mad Dog Mcrea. But it isn’t just the newcomers to the festival who will be creating a stir! The Village Pump is delighted to be welcoming back folk royalty in Barbara Dickson OBE & Nick Holland; Oysterband, the Strawbs,  the reformed English Folk/Reggae fusion band Edward II plus Martin Carthy MBE and Dave Swarbrick – celebrating 50 years of creating brilliant music together.

This year multi-award winning duo Megson will not only be performing their “Out of the Box” set but also featuring their “Family Folk Show” – designed and road tested with that most discerning of audiences – 4-5 year old children. Apart from Megson, entertainment and activities for these “apprentices to the Pump” will come from Noisy Oyster, Wolly, Professor Eek, Francis Maxey, Kooky and Mr.Brown’s Pig.  As is usual at the Village Pump, children and their minders can also participate in Kate’s Crafts and Gill’s Parachute Games and have great fun in so doing.

It wouldn’t be the Village Pump Folk Festival without the appearances of Morris sides local to the festival so it will be great to welcome back both Holt and White Horse Morris.

Away from the music programme, this year the entire traders’ offer has been totally revamped in response to many helpful suggestions and comments from our Pumpers. The food stalls will be offering the widest possible range of great eats – and they are proudly flying the flag for low food miles and terrific West Country produce.

This is definitely one festival that you should all be pretty damned excited about.