Brentwood Beer and Music Festival 2012 – Dodgy

My first visit to the snappily-titled Brentwood Beer and Music Festival, which started in a pub garden, became the Brentwood Festival in future years, and then, inexplicably, “Evoke” in 2019, the last year it was run.

Over the years the festival turned from a good event that supported great music and local bands, into something that people who enjoy Towie and Love Island would call a festival (music taking a massive backstage over blingy falseness). Would you pay ridiculous sums of money to sit in a VIP area drinking champagne and watching mediocre Eagles cover bands? The festival became neither one thing nor another and most of the people going towards the end weren’t really music fans at all – they just wanted to get drunk all day in a field while sitting on a camping chair.

This is the second year of the event – torrential rain all week and all weekend did put a bit of a dampener on the atmosphere. I actually remembered to bring wellies so I was fairly unaffected.

Along with seeing headliners Dodgy – for the first time in over 17 years! – and yobcore Hard-Fi wannabees Missing Andy, I caught a bit of Mark Morriss and a few other acts including Beverley Sisters tribute act Three Belles who were extremely good (and authentic).

I also sat in on Dodgy’s acoustic session played live on Phoenix FM which was conveniently situated just a few yards from the main arena. I was mostly there on the Sunday although I did get a couple of photos of the site on Friday evening too.

Sadly the rain kept the crowds away from Dodgy’s final set. I counted exactly 50 people watching it, in a field that could have held 5,000. It was probably the worst rain I’ve encountered at a festival. Fantastic set though – really tight.