Festival Coverage : Big Day In

MG) Is this the first such event the venue has held? If so where did the inspiration come from and how far in advance did you start planning/booking acts?

Tallah) Yes, this is indeed our first in house festival. We've been part of bigger festivals taking place in Edinburgh, i.e. Haddowfest, EH1 Live and Sneakyfest, which were multi-venue festivals, but this time we wanted to go it alone, booking our own dream line up and housing it all under one roof!

I guess the inspiration came from a few different places. My colleague, John-Paul Mason, and I get frustrated that Edinburgh often gets overlooked when it comes to live music and mini-festivals, so our plan was to try and move away from the more “indie” type festival and to put together a more varied bill focusing on Alternative, New Wave and Electronic artists.

We started discussing our ideas for the festival early in January when we had a bit more time post-Christmas and New Year, but I've actually been speaking with Dutch Uncles' agent since I saw them at a Primavera showcase last May/June.

John-Paul) I saw them at Eurosonic too and loved them.

Tallah) So you can imagine how delighted we both were to finally secure them for an Edinburgh date and over the moon to have them as our Big Day In headliner.

MG) How easy was it to get the acts you wanted to appear?

Tallah) It was relatively easy and we love all of the acts due to perform this Sunday, however our ambitions at the start were perhaps a little bigger than we are, so we weren't without disappointment along the way.

MG) Did you have to turn anyone down from appearing?

John-Paul) Yes. There were some artists who got in touch to play who simply weren't a good musical fit for what we had planned, i.e. folk or acoustic acts, but we never intended it to be that type of event so we had to turn them down.

Tallah) It's always good to hear from new artists though, so we'll hopefully work with some of them further down the line on stand alone shows at the Circus.

MG) Edinburgh seems at the moment to have regained a good level of live venues. Do you think there is any truth in the statements that customers are seeing more live music nowadays as they spend less on buying albums and despite the economic turndown?

Tallah) I'm not sure if we have regained a good level of live venues, but we've certainly regained a better level of live music taking place in the Capital – I'm not sure if people are seeing more though. In the past two years we've had a number of amazing artists pass through our wee venue and I still can't work out the formula for a successful gig or what makes people buy a ticket and leave the house.

John-Paul) It still is difficult to get people to come out for shows unless it's for a band who have had a really big marketing push - for some reason people are not as willing to take a chance in Edinburgh. We are trying to change that and slowly but surely we are getting there – it's all about consistent bookings.

Tallah) I also think that trends are changing with regards to people buying albums – I for one have bought more music in the last 6 months than I probably had in the last couple of years and it's all been on vinyl! Vinyl is a very exciting format, one that's lovely to listen to and nice to look at – I'm really excited more bands have started releasing it again and even Rough Trade announced a 25% sales growth in the first quarter of this year.

MG) Assuming the event is a success do you think you'd consider a multi-venue variant in the future?

Tallah) If the event is a success, I doubt we'd consider a multi-venue variant in future – we'd maybe expand to running the event over two days instead of one, or we would make more use of our karaoke rooms and would turn them into additional and more intimate performance spaces. My dream was actually to run the event alongside a record fair too with local vendors and labels getting involved, so maybe that could come to fruition next time too.

MG) Lastly, how much time do you think you'll get to experience the event yourself?

Tallah) I doubt we'll get to experience much ourselves at all, as one of us will be stage managing and the other will be acting as artist liason, so it'll be pretty full on, but I'm sure we'll catch a couple of songs from each band and we'll still have an amazing day!