Thursday
Whilst Megson are a band whose star is in the ascendant, The Shivers were playing the Club Tent as their swansong. Cambridge based and recommended by NME at one point, the band have decided to call it a day and go out with some style.
Ironically for a band playing their last gig, they take the opportunity to introduce a young female banjo player playing her first ever set. I managed to miss her name and she spent most of the set tucked, almost shyly, away at the side of the stage.
She wasn't on stage for the whole set and I grabbed a quick chat between songs. Apparently, as first time experiences go, it was one of the best.
The Shivers are a good old bar room rock band with plenty of country/bluegrass twists. Maybe because of the stage or by design, they do a lot of bluegrass style clustering around the mics.
It's quite a riotous set, lots of songs about unrequited love and getting dumped. There was a fair level of bitterness, but all delivered with tongue firmly inserted in cheek.
The band signed out with a bar room version of the Donna Summer classic "I Feel Love". It was a good way to go out feet first. I'd missed my first chance to see Cherryholmes to see it, safe in the knowledge that I would be watching them tomorrow.
Going into the set, I knew this was going to be a much rawer on the edge gig and I wasn't cheated of that. With that The Shivers were gone, good luck with the next projects.
It was a switch from an East Anglia bar to something a bit further North with Findlay Napier & The Bar Room Mountaineers.
Most of Findlay's band, Paul Jennings, Gillian Frame and Doug Millar have played Cambridge before in other bands, but this is the first time they've hit a Cambridge stage in this formation.
Short of playing "Nobody's Child", a song that reduces many Glaswegians to tears, Findlay Napier etc. ran through a set guaranteed to play on the emotion.One of the things that really gives the band a unique tweak to their sound is their use of percussion, not drums, percussion. It infuses the sound with an understated rhythm that's more subtle than the more harsh sound of pure drumming
They got into the Cambridge vibe very quickly. The sound is set in Americana but both vocally and across the sound comes a Celtic tide. They certainly connected with the audience quickly enough.
Despite it being delivered in a tent in Cambridge with the sound of rain drumming on the tent, it felt like a proper bar session, loose and wild, but bang on the spot. It was one of those sets that almost seemed to finish before it had started. This being a festival, there's no time for an encore and the crowd was left wanting more. If this is bar room mountaineering, I'm sticking on some crampons, hook me up to a carabineer.
Next it's one of those tough decisions that Cambridge forces upon you, 3 Daft Monkeys, Club Tent, Laura Marling, Stage Two. I'd been in the Club Tent all night so decided to stay loyal to the venue.
Hailing from Cornwall, 3 Daft Monkey's take some of the influences from that county and blend them with, rock, kletzmer, fairground and even at times a country thing. It's good time music of anthemetic quality.
Its high octane stuff that really gets the audience going, the weather forgotten an already charged audience really starts to spark. The band feed of the audience and vica versa. There's no photo pit at the Club Tent so the audience gets really close to the band and it gives good interaction.
The band make good use of repetition in the chorus as a hook, "Hubidilla" is a good example. As designed, the audience latch onto the chorus and join in. It's a great way to end the musical part of the evening.
Just because the music comes to a halt, it doesn't mean the festival has. Now's the time to meet up with friends, who have already had a different festival to you and start comparing notes.
I've hooked up with Andy, my landlord during the festival and it's time to meet up with other members of the Fatea team. We have a tradition that the first pint of the festival comes in a festival tankard. This year is no exception.
Eventually the crew start drifting away and it's time to get some sleep.