Indietracks 2015 – Midland Railway, Butterley

Bands seen: Fever Dream, School, Cinerama, Evans the Death, Ay Carmela!, Bunnygrunt, Free Fall Band, Mammoth Penguins, Desperate Journalist, Haywains, Tigercats, Colleen Green, Catenary Wires, Tuff Love, Colour Me Wednesday, Darling Buds, Laetitia Sadier

First time at Indietracks, and definitely not the last. Best festival I have been to in years and years.

What’s good about it? Great bands. No security at the stages (because no security is needed) despite a capacity of 2,000. A capacity of 2,000. Lots of people drinking but no one being an arsehole because they’ve drunk too much. No one’s trying to be too cool, everyone’s just a bit of a nerd really. A generally happy vibe.

I stayed at a hotel in Chaddesden, on the outskirts of Derby, which was about 20 minutes away. The Derbyshire countryside is beautiful – rolling hills everywhere, and the setting doesn’t get any worse when you get to the festival site either.

I’m the last person in the country who would normally get excited by railways too (despite the presence of my Trans-Siberian writings on this very blog) but driving up to the station and getting a train to take you the final one mile to the site was a brilliant touch.

I found myself being on site much longer than I expected too which is always a great indicator of how good a festival is.

I drove up on the Friday in some of the worst rain I can remember, which was not fun. The rain stopped on Friday evening and on Saturday too but it hammered down for most of Sunday, which caused the Main Stage to close after Laetitia Sadier’s set.

Hard to pick out my best bands as I enjoyed but it’s always great to see The Darling Buds, and I had a great time chatting to them on their enormous Newport Transport coach too, even though they told me later that it wasn’t the best idea arriving on an enormous bus when everyone else had old cars and vans! Desperate Journalist and Colour Me Wednesday also put in a couple of fantastic performances.

And I took 19 videos over the two and a half days which has to be a record. I’ll try and get 20 next year.

The station

The station

Fever Dream

Fever Dream

The School

Cinerama

Cinerama

Evans The Death

Ay, Carmela!

Eureka California

Owls

Can Crush!

Bunygrunt

Bunnygrunt

The Free Fall Band

A drone

A drone

Mammoth Penguins

Desperate Journalist

Desperate Journalist

Desperate Journalist

Desperate Journalist

The Haywains

Tigercats

Colleen Green

The Catenary Wires

Tuff Love

Tuff Love

Colour Me Wednesday

Colour Me Wednesday

Colour Me Wednesday

JC from Martha

The Darling Buds

The Darling Buds

The Darling Buds

The Darling Buds

Laetitia Sadier

Friday 24 July 2015, 759 views

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