The arse end of nowhere. That’s how I often hear Wroot described, and yet, for many more events than I care to document, it has been the centre of things for me.
For the first time, I took Fe, my wife, to the arse end of nowhere for a gig by the Bar Stool Preachers. Fe and I do not share musical taste, but she does love a good live show. If I put Party Eternal on, the upcoming Bar Stool Preachers album, she is indifferent. If she is in a sweaty room surrounded by music fans, watching the band belt out hit after hit, she’s hooked.
We’ve had this planned since the day the tickets dropped. There isn’t strictly a campsite at Wroot, but The Nook, the venue for Gig in a Field, opens to regulars wanting to stay. This weekend, it was even classed as a little rally, with Shanghai Treason playing the night before. Had my beloved Lincoln City not been at home against Southampton, I’d have done both.
Instead, we rolled our camper van onto the Nook at just gone 5 pm on Saturday, set up our toilet tent, had a beer and enjoyed the early-evening sun. We didn’t bank on warm weather, so it was a bonus, or at least that is how it felt after cracking the first can. After that, a walk into Wroot: 0.8 miles, or around 1.3km depending on whether you’re old or new money. I was on foot, so it’s always kilometres, a runner’s curse.
I love Wroot Rocks, and I love the Bar Stool Preachers, so this is a bit like me reviewing a gang show in which my dog plays the lead character in a biopic of Colin Murphy, focusing on his Lincoln City side of 1988. I’m biased; I’d probably say it was good if all he did was bark at the window when the postman walked past.
Neil and Amber always make sure there is a food van, and I tucked into potato salad and KFC-style chicken on the bone. I’ll be honest, I’m not a fan of food which requires admin once served, although it tasted good. I shared a joke with a Wroot patron about not having applesauce on her food, as people who enjoyed fruit on their meat were ‘wrong uns’ which we said in unison. I do enjoy talking to randoms at these events, and as it turned out, she wasn’t a random at all, but support act Sally Pepper.
These gigs are always a voyage of discovery, like smaller Ey Up Mi Duck festivals. It was at Wroot I first heard Voodoo Radio, supporting Millie Manders, who I first heard at Dogfest, led by Ferocious Dog, who I first heard supporting the Levellers. There are two ways to discover music: using some sort of shuffle on Spotify, or seeing someone at a gig, and I am delighted I didn’t have to rely on an algorithm for Sally Pepper.
She’s angry; she left nobody in doubt about her political preferences, and she has quite a few songs about hating men, with one man in particular, Martin, drawing her ire. I don’t pretend to know what her influences are, but for one person and a guitar, she was noisy, rowdy and yet created a really good sound. For fans of acoustic punk, attitude you can feel and a little bit of swearing, Sally Pepper is well worth a listen – Clickbait and It’s Always The Ones You Most Suspect jumping out live.
That led to a break where I could grab a can of Madri for £2.50, which is more or less a pint. I got to chat to Alex Hay on keyboard about the new album. He was selling merch (nice track top in the bag) and was delighted when I named You’re Killing Me, Eve, as one of the strongest tracks outside the singles. He explained the Wildhearts influence, and generally, we just had a nice chat.
We chatted to a few people. One guy had the Antarctic Thistle football shirt on (if you know, you know), but he had Fruitbat and not Jim Bob on the back: I wish I’d worn mine now. I found a fellow football fan to chew the fat with for a short while, then a girl from Leeds who claimed my wife is posh (which she is), drawing a proper chuckle.
Then, instead of the background music being Gaz Brookfield, it was Vengaboys, very un-Wroot. A village hall in the arse end of nowhere went dark, and on stage came my favourite band right now to play some music.
Was it good? Of course it was. ‘Ten years in a band’, joked TJ, the frontman ‘, and I’m playing a village hall to 150 people’. This is no bog-standard village hall, but yes, I went to bigger venues for school discos. That’s the point, though. It’s intimate; the band are right there, close enough to talk to at any stage of the evening, connected with the people paying to watch. It’s authentic, it’s attainable, and it was very, very hot.
We’re not talking LED lighting here, but hot spotlights, and as the night wore on, that early evening sun left a lingering hear that made this gig feel sweaty and maybe new. All big bands started in place like Wroot, but for me, despite being around ten years old, it did feel like an early gig. They weren’t going through the motions, testing new material, coasting and taking it easy. They dripped with sweat. We dripped with sweat. That synergy, which I discussed from their Bedford gig a year ago, came back in a damp, sticky swansong to summer.
They soldier on through adversity as well. After two songs, TJ broke his mic, but sound man Adie, a Wroot legend in his own right, was quickly on stage to sort. In the meantime, the band shuffle round, kept the song going, never missing a beat. If this really was the arse end of nowhere, a village hall gig, maybe the band might have stopped, might have had a tantrum. Instead, they just pressed on.
It wasn’t a warm-up gig where all new stuff got dropped, but we did get some of the new material, including (delighting me) You’re Killing Me, Eve. Party Eternal, the single from which the new album takes its name, is proper singalong punk fare, a tribute to a so-called misspent life. Pick a Side delves into an incident in Madrid where a political band backed away from making a political statement, making them ‘hypocritical’ in every sense of the word.
This isn’t a review of their new work, nor an insight into their motivation. It is an account of a night where music mattered, where that real basic connection between the band and fan happened. Recently, I’ve seen clips on YouTube of bands performing, with captions like ‘vibes’ or ‘biblical’ and in it, I can see mobile phones galore, all pointing at the stage. If something is so biblical your first thought is to film it, you’re probably not doing it right.
No clips here, because aside from snapping super-quick pictures for this write-up, the gig was to be enjoyed directly. What’s that farming saying, from farm to fork? This was from plectrum to ear. No additives. No preservatives. Nothing so biblical I needed to record it. Instead, I felt it.
Of course, this isn’t just the band. The venue helps: tight enough to have atmosphere, warm enough to feel claustrophobic and contained like all those great underground gigs of old. Cheap enough to be in the 90s (okay, people might think £2.50 for a can is a lot, but I paid £6.60 for a 330ml can at Lincoln Castle last year. If you can’t see the value in £2.50 for a Madri at a live event, there is no helping you.
Eventually the band went off stage and did the now unfashionable encore. They came back on, slowed it down with Lighthouse Keeper and then got everyone’s knees up by finishing on their headline track, Bar Stool Preacher. More than an hour of huge quality, one where I know (or think I know) every word had passed.
I was still singing as we made our way back to the campsite, worse for wear but before Saturday turned into Sunday. The band had turned up, as they always do, and delivered a show, but they’d done it to a cracking community. They’re good in bigger venues as well, but for some gigs, for some moments, Wroot is just perfect. Good food, good people, cheap beer and a stage for performances. What more could you want?
We packed up quickly in the rain to drive home the next day, listening to the band. “Listening to them now,” said Fe, dancehead extraordinaire, “I can take it or leave it. They’re just so good live.” There is a compliment in there, because very few bands can draw someone in from another genre entirely purely on their on-stage presence. Luckily, enough people like me exist to buy their albums and enjoy their recorded stuff to fully understand the power of their live shows.