Looks like most my blogging friends have also been taking a bit of a break recently. My summer was pretty much taken over by One Nation's gigs at Soul Survivor and Greenbelt so here's a bit of a mega catch-up post for those who weren't there...We were the house band in Cafe Uno at Soul Survivor week B. This meant playing each night in the Jazz/Funk cafe (Sat to Wed inc) for a couple of hours which actually turned out to be a pretty easy job... each evening, everyone came out of the big top worship meeting on a real high and headed for the cafes so pretty much without fail, the moment we started playing, the dancefloor was full until the sound police came and told us to stop around 11:30. This meant the gigs were pretty relaxed and we could try out some spontaneous jams and a bit of audience participation each night, really enjoy ourselves and it generally seemed to go down well. During the day, the band members did a mixture of their own thing and some stuff together - eg spending time with family, catching some of the seminars, chilling on site or at James' parents - flying kites in Michael Evis' (off of Glastonbury) field (James' parents next door neighbour)
On the Thursday morning we all met up at James' parents again because we had a few hours to kill as we couldn't get onto the Greenbelt site until later that afternoon. A few of us wandered across the field to the Glastonbury Pyramid Stage. Obviously the farm is getting back to being a working farm again now, but the Pyramid structure stays up all year round now.
Just after lunch we drove up from Shepton Mallet to Cheltenham racecourse - a major advantage of being allowed onto site a day early was that there were no queues to get in and we got to pick a good camping spot.
The festival started on Friday afternoon so I spent the day sorting out stuff like getting our merchandise in the Greenbelt shop, making sure the radio station had copies of our CDs to play and caught up with some of the Greenbelt staff who we're getting to know quite well now. On Saturday we did a bit of busking - although much lower key than previous years... we kind of figured that having a mainstage billing and having our name plastered all over the Greenbelt website and programme should be advertising enough.
You can check out a bit of a photo diary of the Greenbelt gigs here.
Sunday was an amazing day, the weather was great, and the whole band, although perhaps a bit nervous, seemed surprisingly relaxed. As there was nothing on mainstage immediately before us (we were the start of the evenings entertainments, supporting Christafari, Soweto Kinch and Coldcut) we were invited to arrive early and have a soundcheck (Greenbelt normally has a no-soundcheck policy for all bands except mainstage head-liners so it was really nice of them to let us). The stage crew and sound team were amazing - really professional and went of their way to make us feel relaxed and happy... in fact by the time we came off stage after the soundcheck we were all really buzzing. We had some time to chill backstage before getting changed, praying together and making our way on stage. We had been a bit worried about how many people would turn up (although the response we were getting from random people whilst walking round site over the previous days, plus the people starting to gather while we were sound-checking, a couple of hours before we were due on put our minds at ease a bit) The problem with a stage like Greenbelt's new mainstage is that being a field it is very easy for it to look like there's hardly anyone there. However we needn't have worried as there must have been something like 2000-3000 people there at a conservative estimate. Also the crowd were really supportive and up for dancing along which meant that we relaxed and really enjoyed ourselves too. The set was by no means perfect, but we all got into it, moved around and I think most of the crowd enjoyed it too (although I've not been able to find any proper reviews of the gig online) Christafari, Soweto Kinch and Coldcut's sets were also great and it was kind of cool to chill out backstage having a cup of tea and chat with some of the guys from Christafari's band after watching Soweto.
On the Monday night we played the YMCA 24hr Cafe stage. They had crazy sound levels they had to keep to which meant it probably didn't sound as good as it should have, but again the crowd were really having it. We were on at the same time as Delirious, Kato, and others so were pleased that the venue (perhaps 300-400 capacity) was full. The plug was pulled very promptly at 11pm (by the sound police - a pattern emerging?!) so we had to finish before we had planned. The crowd wanted a bit more so we led them out of the venue and continued to play percussion outside (ala old-school One Nation stylee) for another 15 mins or so... A great end to a great festival. Who knows if we'll be invited back next year and what stage(s) we'll be on, we'll have to wait and see, but it's fair to say we all thoroughly enjoyed SS and GB07.
