Low-key festival keeps on Trucking

Truckfest 2000: This will be the event's fourth year

By BBC News Online's Ian Youngs

An unheralded music festival has appeared on the British scene - but the major rock events need not feel threatened.

Organisers of Truckfest - which includes everything from acoustic songwriting to dance music - are deliberately keeping their festival small, friendly and uncommercial, and promise to quit if it ever starts to get big.

Despite the small scale, fans keep telling them that their event in a field in Oxfordshire is the best weekend of the musical year.

Rock band Seafood played last year's festival

And although it is called Truckfest, it has nothing to do with over-grown articulated lorries steamrollering clapped-out Ford Cortinas.

It was given that name because the main stage at the first festival, in 1998, was made from two trucks backed up against one another, as it will be when this year's event takes place on 21-22 July.

And festival-goers can expect some surprises they would not encounter at the summer's major events.

The music will come from the best local talent and respected national names, mainly from the alternative and indie mould.

It's still ramshackle and it always will be

Robin Bennett
Festival organiser

Adrenalin rockers Seafood, American alt.country band Lincoln and folk star John Otway are among the names on the bill.

"At the same time, you've got a day of satanic metal in the barn," says founder Robin Bennett.

Imposing heavy rock bands aside, the food will be cooked by the farmer who owns the festival site, the local vicar will sell ice creams to raise cash for his church lighting fund again, and the beer will be served by a bunch of transvestites.

'Boring'

You can do these things when you have not got a multinational company sponsoring you.

The first Truckfest was a one-day event put on by Robin and his friends in their home the village of Steventon, Oxfordshire, after visiting mega mainstream music festival V96.

"It was really boring," he says. "It was just a bit over-done and over-controlled, so we wanted to do something that was more relaxed, more personal and less corporate."

That day in 1998 attracted 1,000 fans. "Which was still pretty good considering we didn't really know what we were doing," he adds.

The main stage is made from two trucks

More than 2,500 are expected this time - although Robin has had to put the price of a weekend ticket up from £10 to £20 to keep the numbers down.

He describes the farmer who owns the land as "the new Michael Eavis", referring to the Glastonbury founder-cum-farmer.

Truckfest is the closest music fans are likely to get to the small-scale festival spirit of the early 1970s.

"It's still ramshackle and it always will be," Robin says.

Record label

"But everyone normally says it's the best time they've had all year. Depending on the weather."

A record label has grown out of the festival's scene, and includes up-and-coming bands Rock of Travolta, Black Nielson and Robin's own Goldrush - who are all playing over the weekend.

Robin says those who have only ever been to major festivals will be shocked by how friendly Truckfest is.

"We could have expanded it more this year," he says. "But we wouldn't enjoy it as much.

"The charm of the festival is that it's all run by the Truck Records crew and the people from the village. It's all run by a load of mates."