Author : Brian Coney

As our motto goes: “Small but MASSIVE”. Over the last 13 years, we at Glasgowbury have been on the look-out for some of the most exciting up-and-coming acts stemming up from right across the country. Not satisfied with settling for exclusively established or well-known talent, the guitar-wielding and beat-making stars of the future play an absolutely pivotal role in not only how our annual festival plays out, but also how our Rural Key Project and regular G Sessions come together time after time. After all, a band must be small before they ever become massive.

In the first of a regular feature looking at our line-up for this year’s festival, we catch up with three new acts playing this year’s Glasgowbury festival for the very first time: all-female post-punk three-piecce Vanilla Gloom, Derry indie-rock band The Clameens and decidedly heavy trio PigsAsPeople. Whilst very diverse in sound and image, we have every faith in each of these acts treading the same paths as the biggest headliners to ever past through Eagle’s Rock Valley…
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This is the first year you’ve played Glasgowbury. Are you excited about playing? What’s the gameplan?

PigsAsPeople (Stevie Lennox, guitarist): Well, we got together as a band at roughly the same time as last year’s festival and being a Mid-Ulster native (’13 being my sixth consecutive year up the mountain), Glasgowbury’s pretty much the one weekend in the year that us locals set aside with a ‘Do Not Disturb’ note.

The Clameens: Yeah, this is our first year at the festival and we are totally overwhelmed to be performing. To be playing on the same bill along with some of the greatest acts in the Northern Irish music scene is really incredible. Especially with this with our city being the City of Culture and how it’s tying in with the festival, a lot of our friends will be performing such as Little Bear, Ryan Vail and Japanese Popstars. Everyone will be in top form this year.

Vanilla Gloom: We’re definitely excited and feel very privileged to be playing Glasgowbury this year, especially as it will be the first time the festival stretches to two days. We had great craic and met some lovely people at the G Session in May; we can only assume the festival will be even better! We’d say our only game plan is to play as best we can and ultimately have fun.

PigsAsPeople (Stevie): Playing the festival was definitely one of the goals we set ourselves when we got together – as it is for pretty much everyone – but didn’t for a second think it would happen so quickly! Admittedly, it’s been on my bucket list for a while…

PigsAsPeople (Wilson Davidson, drums): The plan for our set this year is to basically give people an introduction to how we sound. As we’re a new band, people might not have seen us, so the set will basically be an introduction to PigsAsPeople as a whole, including some surprises!

The Clameens: We don’t have a game plan but we are going to give 110% in our performance. As far as we know Ethan (Clameens guitarist) is the youngest player at this years festival as he’s only two years older than the festival itself!

What has been your experience with Glasgowbury as a festival-goer? What makes if unique, if anything? Any particular highlights in mind?

Vanilla Gloom (Shannon O’Neill, guitar/vocals): All three of us have been lots of times between us. Myself and Megan’s first experience of Glasgowbury was in 2009 when the awesome And So I Watch You From Afar headlined – amazing! It was our first time at a music festival so we were all starry eyed and excited but the wind was soon taken out of our young sails when our tent collapsed under heavy rain at 3 in the morning, leaving us to sleep inside bin bags until dawn.

PigsAsPeople (Stevie): There are actually several photos of the three of us at Glasgowbury ’10 – before I’d ever met the other two – close together at the bands we’d managed to catch (one of which was unsurprisingly in the front row of LaFaro’s main stage slot). The location itself is a sight to behold, and not one festival on these islands can claim to be as scenic as Eagles Rock.

Vanilla Gloom (Grace Leacock, drums): A highlight of mine is remembering a big gathering of lots of musicians in a teepee tent playing music together. It’s a unique sense of community that makes Glasgowbury particularly unique.

PigsAsPeople (Stevie): Some sets that really linger in the memory are Mojo Fury’s in 2011, ASIWYFA’s headlining performance back in 2009 and their playing ‘Don’t Waste Time Doing The Things You Hate’ with a huge cast of friends onstage in 2008. I’d never heard of them prior to that performance, and it was a pretty huge moment. Japanese Popstars last year was something completely fresh too, and it was great to see someone like that up the mountain.

The Clameens: The thing that we love most about Glasgowbury is the atmosphere, in both the music venues and campsite. Everyone is incredibly friendly, there is a really positive vibe and everyone is there to have a great time and to listen to some great local music. Our Glasgowbury highlight so far has to be seeing the Japanese Popstars at the 2012 festival. The show they put on was fantastic and everyone there was blown away by their performance.

In your view, how important are the likes of homegrown festivals like Glasgowbury to Northern Irish music generally?

The Clameens: Very important. Festivals such as Glasgowbury give bands and artists the perfect platform to perform their music to an audience that are really keen to hear new music. It’s through these festivals that Northern Irish bands are given the opportunity to establish themselves and build a significant fan base. The festival experience in general is also really beneficial to local acts.

Vanilla Gloom: As the festival continues to grow in popularity each and every year, playing at it gives smaller, less well-known bands a greater opportunity to perform for a more diverse audience and to get their name out there. The whole festival has such a friendly atmosphere and everyone we have met from the Glasgowbury team have been so supportive – you can tell they care about young bands and they really give you that fire in your belly to go further!

PigsAsPeople (Stevie): Essential. This really can’t be understated. It gives bands not only something to work towards, but an incentive to progress and up their game. You see bands like Mojo Fury, Axis Of and ASIWYFA who’ve played, starting out as a hot new prospect and getting up to the level of potential headliners. The other great thing is that the grassroots ethos and the sense of community during the weekend means that even if you’re playing, you’re still going as a fan. Obviously, such a diverse lineup can only do good for the festivalgoers in terms of getting some excellent local music into their ears. I know with 100% certainty that without Glasgowbury, I wouldn’t have gotten into local music the way I have.

What other acts at this year’s festival are you looking forward see?

Vanilla Gloom: We’re all pretty psyched to be seeing the return of Jetplane Landing and some of our favourite local bands like VerseChorusVerse, The Bonnevilles, Our Krypton Son, More Than Conquerers, PigsAsPeople, The Dead Presidents and And So I Watch You From Afar.

PigsAsPeople (Stevie): Jetplane Landing in a major way, for both their music and the fact that they helped lay the groundwork with the D.I.Y. approach in the music scene over here – we really respect that. I’ve been really admiring The Wood Burning Savages and Vanilla Gloom too; they’re probably the 2 new bands I’m most excited about in the country right now, and we’re all big fans. The Dead Presidents, Axis Of, More Than Conquerors, Japstars, Little Bear, Trucker Diablo and VerseChorusVerse all stand out as bands we’re looking forward to seeing this year.

The Clameens: We are staying the two days camping over this years festival so we are going to try catch as much of the acts performing as possible. We have never seen ASIWYFA before so this will be our first this time seeing them – really excited.

Aside from the festival, what are the plans for the band over the summer?

The Clameens: We are pretty busy throughout the summer. We have a few more festivals and a lot of gigs coming up , both north and south, so we will be on our feet pretty much all of the summer. We are also scheduled to record this summer with our new producer who we have worked on with our latest single ‘She’s Got My Heart’ which will be released before July.

Vanilla Gloom: We’ve got a fairly busy Summer ahead of us. We’re going on a tour of Scotland during the first week of July including Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen and more. We’re playing some other class Northern Irish festivals as well and we’re going to use the summer months to write new songs which we hope to record in the Autumn.

PigsAsPeople (Chris Lecke, bass/vocals): This summer is very hectic for us – we’ve got Glasgowbury, touring and an EP to release all in one month. August is going to be our serious writing month. We’ve really began to find a comfortable place between chaos and beauty in our music and we’re so excited to show you all the new stuff we’ve been working on. We’ve got plans to record again soon but for now it’s all about touring and releasing this next EP! Oh, and house gigs, lots and lots of house gigs!

Look out for our “… MASSIVE” interview with Belfast-based indie rock quartet Ed Zealous at the end of the week.
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Tickets for this year’s Glasgowbury Festival are available to buy here.

Small But MASSIVE.