Well, our open-air summer gigs started with the Bearded Theory Festival in Derbyshire. As reports have no doubt already informed you, it was an utter mudbath. Organisation for the Campfire stage on the Friday was almost non existent, too. Further adding to our worries. Chin up though! We were still in a bouyant frame of mind, still full of beans following our very encouraging gig at Platform in Shrewsbury, just days earlier. Some friends from there were camping with us. It would take a lot to bring our moods down.











This was the first year of the event going mainstream. It was hosting a bigger bill than its previous formative shows. 2009 had the likes of Hawkwind, The Dreadzone Soundsystem, Saw Doctors and Neville Staple & His Special Friends headling. However, the promoter had been badly let down by key crew members not turning up on the day, without warning.

We were booked to play a late evening set on that Campfire stage. There was no sound engineer present - or even a stage manager.  The bands had to watch the length of their own sets, helping each other loading and unloading gear to the itinary. And even try to supervise the sound mix out front. An inexperienced trader stood in on the mixing desk but did an admirable job.

We got our tents up in the backstage camping area and awaited our slot.









And then it started raining...




The ground around the stages quickly turned to soup. A very thick minestrone soup, in all but taste.  As we went on at 10pm the heavens opened - and dropped any remaining water in heavy, wind propelled showers onto any audience that had gathered as we struggled with our volunteer roadie to mic up the kit and backline.




We had very poor onstage sound and really struggled. But at least we weren't being rained on whilst we stumbled through our songs, watching each others hand for telltale clues as to where the heck we were in our semi improvised songs.






After a thorough soaking as we broke the gear down we retired firstly to a nice chillout tent, but on finding there was a midnight music curfew, we squished our way through dark and sloppy maze of tents to our own corner and got drunk.

It was as we drove back home on the Saturday afternoon, exhausted and damp - wondering whether the friends we'd left on site would finally get some better weather to rescue the weekend that we heard that the main stage, open-mic marquee and other catering structures had been destroyed by a freak wind. It was later reported on the television news that it was quite possibly a tornado.