Tag Archives: Red Rooster Festival

Monthly Playlists

May 2026 Playlist

I was saddened this week to learn of the cancellation of the Red Rooster Festival which was due to take place at the end of May. I was a little late to the party on this one, only finally attending what is, for me, quite a local event in 2023 and 2024. But it did seem like it had hit upon a healthy niche of vintage R&B, Americana and more Roots leaning acts and furthermore, the attendances looked pretty healthy. Admittedly Red Rooster was one of the smaller festivals on the circuit, but I assumed their bottom line in terms of ticket sales was calculated and attainable. I think maybe they suffered because a percentage of the attendees booked late but, from the evidence I saw, they did generally book when the time came around. I have a friend who came along on one of the days but only made the decision to go that morning. But if you are the organizer and it is your money on the line if those tickets do not sell come opening day, then it has to be accepted that this is not a risk most us would, or could afford to, take. Therefore, I have no grounds to criticize the decision to cancel due to ticket sales and lack of funding. It is just a shame, that is all.

I do wonder if I was part of the problem and therefore, potentially, represent a wider, largely invisible demographic? You will notice I attended in 2023 and 2024 but not last year so what was the reason for that? Well, I am sorry to admit to non-sports fans that last year I held off committing to Red Rooster because my football team, Arsenal, looked like they might get to the Champions League Final, which just happened to be scheduled for the Saturday night of the festival. As it turned out, Arsenal did not make the final last year but by the time I knew that it was a bit too late to re-shuffle things to incorporate attending a festival instead. Well, this year, as some of you might know, Arsenal are once again in with a chance of making it to the most prestigious final in European football competition and once again too, the final is scheduled for what would have been the closing Saturday night of Red Rooster. So, as it was last year, I had held back from a festival on the basis that it might have meant my missing a sporting occasion for my team. The last and only time in their history they got to that stage was in 2006 and they lost so, it is potentially a night I just might share in an experience no Arsenal fan has witnessed in their whole 150-year history.

Do you see the problem? And am I not completely off the mark to suggest it might have just been a small but significant factor in some numbers hesitating in committing to this festival? It is, after all, in the Southeast of England and football is, I believe, the number one national mass entertainment interest and on top of that, Arsenal are a North London club and have a huge fanbase in this part of England. I believe this all stacks up quite credibly, even though I can easily believe that many of the hardcore Red Rooster attendees would turn their noses up at the idea of even watching football, let alone prioritizing it over a music event. Regardless, having put this all out there I would like to take this opportunity to apologize if any actions of mine contributed, however indirectly, to this festival being cancelled. You cannot plan events based on the sporting calendar; I know that. If you did nothing would ever get booked because there are major sporting events happening every weekend, even every day at some times of the year.

Still, I come back to what this occasion represents; the Champions League Final is the biggest fixture in the football club season and if your team has even the slightest chance of taking part then, as a fan, you will not want to miss it. Arsenal genuinely do have a good chance of getting to the final this year, even more so than they did last season to be honest. On Wednesday they played the tougher leg of a two-leg semi-final, away from home in Spain, and came away with a deserved draw. Now they need to win at home in the second leg on Tuesday evening in London. If this happens you might notice some tangibly happier writing on Fruit Tree Records in the days that follow. If we are eliminated however, denied a place in the final for the second year in a row, then I guess all you football loathing cowboys mourning the loss of Red Rooster can say I got hit by the karma I deserved.

Champions League Semi Final 2025; The kind of scenes I am hoping are not repeated on Tuesday 5th May this year…

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Monthly Playlists

June 2024 Playlist

The Red Rooster Festival might well become my annual curtain raiser to the festival season. I am just back from attending my second year there having long been recommended it by friends who too have an appreciation of great music in quite a grand setting stately home grounds setting. The tone is mainly rootsy, there is a lot of Americana, always a good deal of rockabilly, country and blues whilst there are always some garage band fuzziness blowing through the branches of the old English oak trees. The other thing they get right is not having any obviously big attention-grabbing headline names appearing, so you can casually drift between the stages on site catching artists that I often have not heard of before but invariably offer up something unexpectedly fantastic and ripe for discovery. It also helps that the crowd is mostly made up of similarly engaged and interested punters, there are a distinct lack of assholes at Red Rooster.

One night the sound of bluesy piano acrobatics clearly played by someone with the fluency of a classicist caught my ear coming from a smaller stage with no more than two hundred people gathered around. This was Derek Paravicini, a blind autistic savant known as a musical prodigy who from an incredibly early age has been able to play any piece of music, note and pitch perfect, after hearing it only once. I would venture that his place on the autism spectrum is high because his between number hand motion routines were exactingly repeated every time and his left right head turning locked in like clockwork as he played every piece. But piano playing at this level is not something you see in the flesh, well ever really. I cannot comprehend how those hands moved so fast across complex classical, blues, stride and ragtime pieces so naturally, he was mesmerizing and a privilege to listen to. As far as headline performances on the main stage went, Kitty Liv was by far the star of the weekend. She grabbed that stage with venom and had a ball while doing so, taking the crowd with her every step. Backed by her brother (Lewis in her other band obviously) and boyfriend, they had fun with the platform, swapping instruments in unison for the thrill of it as they tore through ‘Keep Your Head Up High’ when the set hit a peak.

By contrast the big Friday night attraction, Paul Simonon, in his latest duo configuration alongside Kevin Ayers daughter Galen Ayers playing a French inflected take on twee retro pop, was notable for all the wrong reasons. If they had been put on in a midday slot with no headliner related expectations, their forced fey charm might have floated across the arena harmlessly enough, but here with a huge crowd (the largest I have seen at the main stage here) revved up for some Clash related mayhem perhaps, the contrast between anticipation and deliverance could not have felt more jarring. Within twenty minutes of the start 75% of that crowd had left and you could sense that the performers onstage were all too aware of it. Paul and Galen frequently turned their backs on the crowd, far more comfortable locking into each other’s gaze, while the other musicians retreated so far to the stage edges, they must have risked falling off. Not since hearing Ian Brown fronting the Stone Roses at the Cambridge Corn Exchange in 1995 have I seen an audience wince at a lead vocalist the way they did poor old Paul here and the most galling thing is, it is probably not his fault he ended up here, he is not a front man and he knows it; to be fair he was barely trying to be, reluctant does not begin to describe it. Still I stayed for the whole set, sometimes you have to witness the bad ones to really appreciate the great ones and I will also say, for the sake of balance, that talking to some Clash fans around a festival fire pit after the music had ended on the closing night, they all thought Simonon was immense. He was the only reason they were there. Writing about music, you never find a definite position everyone can agree on, maybe that is why it never gets boring.

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