I shouldn’t have been at Wrootstock 4. The week prior, I’d stayed in a nice seaside pub in Norfolk with the good lady, with zero plans to head to Wroot.
I’ll be honest, a festival in October shouldn’t work. A festival in a village hall, with camping a mile away, shouldn’t work. Maybe that was in my head when I saw the lineup, boasting some really good names, and dismissed it. Then my phone buzzed, and my mate/nephew Dave was on the end, asking if we were going.
Eff it, why not? I’ve been to Wroot twice in the van over the last couple of weeks; why not go back again?
So, with a couple of hours’ turnaround in Withcall, I departed Weybourne on Friday morning and was setting up the van and awning for the second week in a row at the Nook by tea time. Quick beer on the walk to the event, and we were in the hall, having missed just two acts: Sam Draisey and Matt Johnson. We were in place for Liam Vincent and the Odd Foxes, with Sam Draisey and Matt Johnson playing. Handy.
I do love Liam Vincent and the Odd Foxes, and there is an emotional connection that will always be there. Back in August 2025, a day before I found out Dad’s cancer was terminal, I saw them play ‘Time To Go’, a song written about Liam’s mother’s illness and passing, and it nailed me (as I know it has nailed Wroot star Julie as well). Since then, I feel a draw to the band, and that didn’t diminish when he dedicated the same song to me on Friday night.
I’ve cried my tears for Dad, but the song squeezed out maybe one more. The rest of the set? Really good. Dave, Chris and I have a list of bands we love, like Ferocious Dog, Black Water County and Millie Manders, capable of holding a festival stage with banger after banger, and LVOF are so, so close. We have a guitar, a violin, capable musicians and a stage presence, and I can’t help but feel they’re going to be on the stages across the summer more and more.
Dan Donnelly of the Levellers was up next. He played a different set to the week before, another gig I saw, and his patter between songs was different. That’s a mark of natural talent. Some acts I’ve seen are good, but the jokes are the same, and the banter is the same, such as the Cloverhearts. That’s not a slur; I want to hear the songs, and if you go to two comedians’ shows, they’re often identical anyway, but with Dan, it’s a natural charisma, I think.
The evening ended with Voodoo Radio, going from a support act to the main headliner. I saw them perform on my first visit to Wroot, supporting Millie Manders, and they’ve since crept from mid-afternoon at a summer festival to headlining at Wrootstock. They’re good with some strong songs, and they make plenty of noise.
We stumbled out, drunk, and instead of heading back to the van, we went to the pub, The Cross Keys, which was fun. It was virtually empty, but we still got a late taste. It felt like we’d left a family wedding for the local boozer – a darkened hall full of friendly faces replaced by a brightly lit bar and, at first, an air of suspicion. Wroot is a little village in the middle of nowhere, and it seems Wroot Rocks, while brilliant for us, hasn’t quite caught all of the locals’ attention.
We did finally walk the mile back to the van, at twenty past midnight, and fell asleep very quickly. It’s not surprising; I’d had the equivalent of ten pints in maybe four hours, which matched my alcohol intake for the previous two months in its entirety.
The next morning, Dave and I had tea and bacon, but I was aware of a problem. In 2018, I had major surgery on my back, rods, screws, and someone wiping my bum for a week or two. I’d twisted awkwardly in Norfolk and aggravated the injury, and sleeping on the hard bed of my van, a night after the softest bed in the world in Norfolk, brought it all crashing back. I knew, deep down, that I needed to rest it on the way home from the break, but by then I was excited about one last outing of the summer in the van.
Down went a couple of Naproxen, then a couple of co-codamol, before the walk into Wroot. It was more of a creep into the village, because my painkillers hadn’t really kicked in, but they did limit my alcohol intake to a single can all day.
The first four acts were all ‘one person and a guitar’ with their own tracks and stories. Jack Kendrick has a couple of really top songs which deserve wider attention, such as Untold Truths, which is a singalong. Harrison Rimmer and Blake Cateris formed the next section of the afternoon, one I was struggling with. An issue with this festival, over Gig in a Field, is you can’t take your own seats, and I was standing up, in pain, for a long while.
Neil, one of the event organisers and all-round top bloke, offered to let me lie in his van out back of the venue. Julie, ‘just a barmaid’ (she claims, but part of the Wroot soul), got me painkillers, while Kerrie, someone who I have simply fallen into talking to by virtue of always being at the same festivals, offered plenty of sympathy.
Sally Pepper rounded off the acoustic quartet, and I am a big fan of her live show. She kept looking down and eventually fessed up to watching the Man Utd and Liverpool women’s football at the same time as gigging ‘because I’m a massive lesbian’. When someone said Daz was a massive United fan, she retorted, ‘Daz sounds like a bellend’ with a smile. I loved that. Dave loved her claims she kept her set light and fun before saying, ‘so here’s a song about nonces’. Sally is angry, engaging and dry all at the same time, and I’m here for it.
If going to the pub made this feel like a family wedding, so did the people and interactions as the afternoon wore on. Not because I was avoiding a handsy uncle, but because there were so many faces you could say ‘I know you’ without actually knowing them. Kerrie and Baz are a classic example. For my first GIAF, I had a St George’s flag tent, and I asked people to write on it. She (I think) messaged, and we joked about a Reform voter who’d got uppity, and since then, without ever really sitting down to talk, we say hello, etc. She and Baz had a hand-wrapping ceremony at Ey Up this year, so technically, I was at a part of their wedding. Seeing them, just chatting without really knowing each other, is part of the Wroot experience. Not sure an inebriated Baz will recall chatting as we stood at the urinals though!
Good music is a part of the experience, and Samantics definitely produces that. He’s manic and measured, a really unique live act that doesn’t fit any genre. If I were to try, I’d say carefully constructed, socially conscious, manic rap. Banjo Playing Eminem Wannabe is a track he delivers that others feel defines him, but it dropped off his setlist for this show. Pop Song didn’t, but don’t listen to it without wanting an annoying earworm.
By now, I was really struggling with my back, but the sun held out. Fears of an October festival dissipated as the sun shone like early summer, and I found myself spread out eating Devon’s lamb curry with a can of pop on the grass in a park. I used to love winter, getting a fire lit, locking the world away and losing myself in a video game, but as I get older, I want sunshine, the outdoors and people. I’m a bit of a contradiction, though, because I don’t speak to a lot of people I don’t know through a mix of anxiety and being shit at small talk.
What I love is believing in people. It sounds so New Age that a 20-year-old me wants to deliver a slap, but for a while, I lay there listening to people’s conversations about having a bone in their leg, or looking forward to the main act. I saw people hugging, saying hello to old friends, and just getting lost in a real moment, not hiding behind a screen or interacting with digital friends. Despite feeling like I might not walk again, I love that sense of life.
Life describes Flatcap Carnival. They’re a seven-piece (I think) who crammed onto the Wroot stage like ladybirds clustering in the corner of a room, one on top of the other, some occasionally hidden. When they said they played Latino music, I confess, I thought about a quick walk back to the campsite to get my painkillers, but they numbed my pain better than any drug.
I don’t think swearing to accentuate a point makes for good writing, but Flatcap Carnival are fucking great live. They buzzed around like a living organism, always with something different to look at. I didn’t know if the brass section had wandered on by accident, one looking ready to go for a run, the other like he’d got lost and accidentally ended up on stage. It was only after four songs I noticed they’d hidden their keyboard player away. Casper on the bongos appeared to play a different instrument every thirty seconds, including (but not limited to) a cowbell, harmonica, whistle, bongs (hands and sticks), and what I think was a vase full of rice wrapped in red netting.
If you need any further reason to go and see them, they flit between their own stuff, such as the energetic ‘Mexico’ to surreptitious covers of Vengaboys spliced with their own stuff, to balls-out covers of (and you’d never guess it) the Spice Girls.
After that, IDestroy came on, and while their music isn’t quite for me, they’re clearly very good. An all-female three-piece described to us as ‘lovely people’ by those in the know; they’re loud and noisy, and as I said, while they won’t be on my playlist, it’s because it’s not my genre, rather than not being good.
Finally, Skinny Lister. Now, bear in mind, I’m almost 10 hours standing up, bad back, proper painkillers taken at midday (no ibuprofen, which, while gratefully received, is like sticking a plaster on a severed limb). I could be forgiven for being a little grouchy. Instead, I was buzzing by this point, despite not drinking. The same could be said for the band (buzzing, not the not drinking). They bring a flagon of ale on stage, and lead singer Lorna jumps into the crowd for an arm wrestle during the set.
They’re best described as Shanty Punk, and their music was born out of a pub night in Greenwich which ended in sea shanties, and they’ve developed and honed that over the years. One of their most recognisable tracks, Trouble on Oxford Street, is more punk than shanty, but John Kanaka is the opposite. With a double bass and melodeon among their instruments, they have a very unique sound, but they belong on big stages. They’re a top, top band.
Wroot’s stage isn’t big, and yet the artists who fill it do so with the gusto of much larger venues. I remember seeing a sullen Skints at Dogfest a few years ago, and it felt like they were reluctant to play the Gliderdrome in Boston, as if they had no business there. Skinny Lister have no real business headlining an event that feels a little like a family wedding, but it works.
It works because it’s not the size of a venue, but it’s the heart. Wroot has a lot of heart, something I’ve waxed lyrical about time and again of late. It was proven moments after the final curtain came down on the excellent headline performance; Neil found me and immediately offered me a lift back to the campsite as he knew my back had been painful all day. I understand he made several journeys between the venue and the campsite, but he found me first. By fluke or design? I’d wager design, all day long.
We were packed up and in Gainsborough McDonald’s for a shitty but filling breakfast by the time most of the campers were stirring after a really cold night’s sleep. It didn’t feel like October all day, but my face was chilly in the van, the only sign that we’re into autumn and the festival season has ended. As we mauled a breakfast wrap, I pondered my journey over the last 14 months with the Wroot family, from fluttering around the edges to being embraced as part of the group.
There is no doubt that my journey from GIAF 7 in August 2025 to Wrootstock in October 2026 feels much longer than the 14 months between suggest. I’ve lost employment and found my passion. I’ve lost my Dad, but am discovering a surrogate family of sorts, and have been embraced by what I think can be described as a subculture that makes me believe in people. I feel like Neil, Amber and Julie are friends, as are some whose names I don’t know, but whose faces (and sometimes hairstyles) are as recognisable as some of the Lincoln players I watch every week.
To have all of that, against a backdrop of good music, honest, hard-working musicians and an accessible, intimate venue that embraces all, makes me excited for my next visit.
PS: My back was fine after a night in my own bed and a handful of CBD gummies. Happy days.