Black Deer Festival 2022 - Eridge Park, Kent
My first experience of standing tightly crowded in a field for the love of music was not the euphoric epiphany it promised to be. To be fair, it was a long, long time ago; I was fifteen and fragile. Some of my fellow patrons were fearless and fighty. I retreated to a safe spot and tried not to think of the Battle of the Somme. Somewhere in a different postcode, I could vaguely make out one of my favourite bands doing their thing.
Fast forward a few years later and I found myself, late at night, wading back to a campsite through a sea of brown water at what must've been the wettest Cambridge Folk Festival on record. I have barely set foot in a tent since and start to perspire whenever anyone says flysheet. The music? The music had been brilliant but, on balance, I probably would've traded the ordeal for staying home and playing the albums in my (then rather depressing) bedsit instead. Decades later, I'm encouraged by the fact that music festivals (along with my living quarters) have come a very long way, but those early experiences have coloured my view forever, allowing me to see them for what they essentially are: an insane game of meteorological chance, and a balancing act of shared joy and (literally) crushing disappointment.
Only in its third year (that’s five, in pandemic years), Black Deer is a relative newcomer to the summer's cramped festival calendar and is what some people might call 'boutique' or ‘fledgling’. This means it's still enormous (seven stages) but once you’ve completed the long hike to the main entrance, you can do a lap of its delights in about fifteen minutes, without needing to switch on your satnav. After the enforced two-year hiatus, the festival is back, boasting some heavyweights of roots, folk, rock and Americana, including Van Morrison, Wilco, James and The Waterboys. Black Deer may still be in its infancy, but that doesn’t stop its organisers aiming high.
Red Guitar Music attended Black Deer in 2019 and were looking forward to its delayed return. Sadly, a large portion of our team was struck down by everyone's favourite respiratory virus, so we only got to dip our toes into the Saturday offering this time around. One of the best things about our last visit was getting to know some of the, let’s say, middleweight artists. M G Boulter, Larkin Poe, John Smith, The Sheepdogs, Morganway, Worry Dolls, and Lucero were just a few of the acts that grabbed us and refused to let go. Because Black Deer casts its Americana net rather wide, it’s pretty much guaranteed that - whichever way you like your guitars slung - there’ll be something new for everyone to discover as stoner rock rubs shoulders with bluegrass and modern folk sits alongside purer blues, soul and country.
Darlingside
An unnecessarily circuitous drive (thanks, Google) followed by that schlep downfield meant that we didn’t catch the Songwriter Session - a real highlight of 2019 - which opened the Ridge Stage. But we were fully orientated (and more importantly, fed) in time to catch Darlingside on the main stage. The Massachusetts baroque-folk quartet were their usual utterly charming selves, tearing with playful abandon through fan favourites from their Birds Say and Extralife albums, along with a too-small helping of songs from their excellent third album, Fish Pond Fish and an unexpected cover of the Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘1979’. While gently mocking one another, they told us how unimpressed they were by Gary Gatwick, congratulated us – as a nation – on our crisps (thanks, we know) and, I suspect, increased takings at the crepes stall by several hundred percent.
Almost simultaneously, talented slide guitarist Jack Broadbent was pleasing a mass of bodies inside The Ridge stage. And as those fans filtered slowly out, I was somewhat alarmed to see a large number of very small children, armed with hammers and saws, assaulting a huge timer den. Thankfully, they were under the supervision of the folks at Woodland Tribe, the outdoor adventure-playground construction specialists. So, yes, this is a family-friendly festival where the grown-ups get to enjoy some tunes, comfortable in the knowledge that the kids are over there somewhere, playing with hand tools and getting the odd splinter. Going along with that, for the adults there’s axe-throwing on offer, too. I was mildly discouraged by the chalkboard reminding participants to sign the waiver while queuing but could certainly see the appeal, as the weapons thunked satisfyingly into their wooden targets. These things all contribute to the sense that Black Deer, while extremely relaxed, is also a little bit on the edge.
And if you like things edgy, then The Roadhouse stage is probably the place for you. It’s a dirty sweatbucket of a tent, home to the festival’s noisier contingent. As I passed by, Josiah was dishing out deliciously fat slabs of guitar heaviness to an appreciative audience. I don’t know exactly how they did it, but Black Deer just nailed the vibe of a remote and forbidding Californian biker bar …in the middle of the verdant Kent countryside. For the fainter-of-heart, there is the Supajam stage, where chill is most definitely the drill. Supajam - an education project equipping vulnerable and disadvantaged people with musical skills - is a hugely successful and important part of the festival and the atmosphere inside the tent is suitably warm and nurturing; essentially, it’s the hippy commune of your dreams. I arrived at the close of Jazz’s set, instantly wishing I’d stopped by earlier.
At every festival there’s the one that got away. I’d been really hoping to catch the soulful brilliance of Amy Helm (daughter of Levon) over in Haley’s Bar but on arrival I learned that her set had had to be cancelled - along with the remainder of her UK tour with Mavis Staples - another consequence of The Virus That Shall Not Be Named. I drifted back to the main stage where the London African Gospel Choir held the crowd rapt with their tribute to Paul Simon’s Graceland album. You might think this set of etched-in-stone classics ought not to be messed with, but the LAGC struck the perfect balance, keeping the core of each beloved track safe while infusing them with their own infectious energy. Every cloud does, as it turns out, have a silver lining. More about clouds later…
Having refuelled on parmesan and truffle fries (seriously, I could write a whole column about the food offering), next on my must-see list was Declan O’Rourke, back at The Ridge. O’Rourke’s 2021 Paul-Weller-produced album, Arrivals, prompted no small amount of gushing in the RGM reviews section and the excessively talented Irishman delivered a generous helping of its tracks in his set, accompanied by a spotless string quartet. Highlights included the wonderful ‘Stars Over Kinvara’ and ‘The Harbour’. Crowning the set with the inevitable (but still brilliant) ‘Galileo’, the besuited O’Rourke is surely one of Ireland’s best - and longest - kept secrets; fusing wise lyrics with an intuitive sense of melody, rare guitar skill and that deep, irresistible voice. Apparently, he’s also recently published his first novel so, you know, I might need to go back and replace the phrase ‘excessively talented’ with ‘preposterously talented’.
Declan O’Rourke
As the sky began to dim and the clouds started to gather (the rain having done an on/off tease all afternoon), I found a spot in front of Wilco as they took the main stage. Never having seen the legendary group before, and - I confess - only being dimly aware of their recorded output, I was impressed by their musical quirk and onstage swirl, as they immediately got everyone whooping and swaying in a way that is surely illustrated on page two of the How To Festival handbook. It was officially party time. However, as the sky chilled down and the greyness began to gather some more, I could think only of my past misadventures at Cambridge, so I decided to take my leave of Black Deer 2022 a little early. After beating the lengthy retreat back to the car, the heavens promptly opened and I congratulated myself on the rare good judgment call.
What I didn’t know as I weaved my way home, with lightning flashing in the distance, was that the final main stage act, The Waterboys, had their set curtailed as Black Deer took the correct but unwieldy decision to evacuate the site for everyone’s safety. Unpredictable flying electricity and large scaffolded structures - as we know, children - do not mix well. By all accounts this unimaginably difficult logistical feat was handled well and will no doubt have been an important learning process for the festival.
I’ve already said that, in terms of Americana’s broad church, Black Deer have all bases covered. But there’s a careful curation to all the non-musical elements too: the site is littered with classic American vehicles; there’s live flame-grilled cookery demos, cigar-box guitar making and much more. Were it not for the intermittent rain, anyone from the quaint, neighbouring villages who found themselves there by accident might rightly believe that they’d teleported to the American West. Black Deer make such a transformation look easy but, like the axe-throwing, I’ll bet it’s anything but.
I’ve said enough about my bad experiences at festivals but I just wanted to squeeze in one last metaphor about the good. Being at a good music festival is like eating out at a restaurant where everything on the menu looks tasty. There were so many things at Black Deer this year that we would have crammed in if only our own circumstances had been different. Hopefully we’ll get the chance to see some of the acts we missed at future events, as Black Deer does seem to invite artists back year on year - making it a family festival in that other sense of the word - but one thing is for sure: we’ll be back. As Black Deer grows and goes from strength to strength, we’re more than happy to be along for the ride.
Black Deer Festival Review by Rich Barnard.
Early Bird tickets for Black Deer 2023 are now on sale at https://blackdeerfestival.com
My first experience of standing tightly crowded in a field for the love of music was not the euphoric epiphany it promised to be. To be fair, it was a long, long time ago; I was fifteen and fragile. Some of my fellow patrons were fearless and fighty. I retreated to a safe spot and tried not to think of the Battle of the Somme. Somewhere in a different postcode, I could vaguely make out one of my favourite bands doing their thing.