Dirty Boots!

The last weekend in August, and a brand-new festival to play at!
The Dirty Boots Festival was started up this year as a fundraiser for cancer research charities, and of course that's something we're happy to support, plus it was in Chris & Ruth's home village of Broughton Gifford, so not far to stagger home from either - win-win.



Great stage, incorporating the famous 'Eat More Chips' potato lorry...

We were on early evening, so turned up that afternoon to check everything out, and were pleased to find that it was a very well organised and friendly event, with FREE BEER for performers - Glory Be! And very reasonable barprices as well, when that ran out. Which it did, quite rapidly.

Our set went down very well, all credit to the excellent sound & stagecrew, although we were playing into the last rays of the sun, which blinded us all somewhat so we had to be careful not to go wandering completely off the front of the stage... again, we lucked out with the weather, which makes every single outdoor gig this year so far (take note, festival organisers: get Billy in the Lowground to play, and you're guaranteed sunshine, as well as good bar-takings)!


Blinded by the light...

 

 We stuck around to listen to some of the other bands for a while, but as soon as the sun went down, it started to turn decidedly nippy, and we retired to the warmth of indoors, like the bunch of wimps we are! A good little festival, which will hopefully return next year - it raised £5000 for charity apparently, despite a less than huge attendance.
If I had one suggestion, it would be to lower the ticket prices a bit - that would help with the gate numbers, I reckon.

The following weekend saw us back at the Plough in Manston - after such a long run of outdoor gigs it felt a bit weird to be playing in a pub; where was the stage manager? Why aren't there any roadies to lump our gear out of the van?!
It didn't take us long to get back into the swing of it though, and we soon remembered why we like playing here; as usual, it was full of sedate diners tucking into their roasts when we got there, but by the time the food was cleared away and the drinkers came out to play, the place was heaving, and it was yet another barnstorming gig - the landlord must have been chuffed, as he gave us more money than we'd asked for, an unheard of event! We'll be back in the New Year...