Rob da Bank can’t wait for PJ Harvey

By
sharonw
– July 25, 2009Posted in: Festivals, News
PJ Harvey: acoustic show in Big Top

PJ Harvey: acoustic show in Big Top

Family Festivals had a chat with Bestival boss Rob da Bank this morning in the velvet-lined surroundings of the best press tent in the world (designed in all its Arabian Nights opulance by his missus Josie da Bank). Maybe it was the surroundings, maybe it was Rob’s well-known laid-back attitude, but for someone in the middle of running the best family festival we’ve ever been to, he seemed very relaxed and mellow…

So you’re back here for a second year – how have you improved things since 2008?
Last year the main problem was car parking and camping, just not enough space. This year we ensured that didn’t happen again. We maybe overcompensated this year, but people bring vast acres of canvas here. Usually at a festival you get all two-man tents, here it’s nine man tents, two cars and gazebos for each family.

Things seem a bit smoother running – getting onsite wasnt a problem this year. Are you happy with the organisation?
Very smooth so far. We moved the dates by a week this year so the summer holidays have started. Last year we had dads rushing to finish work then get down here, but this years people set off in the morning and by 4pm we were pretty much full.

Were you worried that with the economic situation you wouldn’t sell out this year?
Very much so, ticket sales did start off slower and we were pretty worried, but suddenly when the sun came out the last two and a half months it all went went haywire and we ended up selling out.

We’re all about family festivals and this is the most family orientated festival we’ve found. What is your recipe for a good festival for the whole family?
We’re still learning that. The reason we set this up was so we could hang out with our own kids at a festival and our friends could do the same. In a good way it’s a middle class audience and we’ve got to get the mixture right from food stalls to to toilets, book tents and all that. It’s not an easy crowd to please, there are all kinds of people here but there are a lot of people who havent been to festivals before.It’s a learning curve for everyone.
How do you keep Camp Bestival different for the main Bestival? Are there any rules of what you can and can’t have on here?
This is generally a more chilled out vibe, more jazzy stuff, soul and reggae – Kid Creole last night, sort of thing. But we thought last year it would all be adults and little kids but there’s a hell of a lot of teens as well. We catered for them this year with Let’s Go Crazy, an underage night. It was rammed with teenagers going mad last night.
 
How did you choose this venue? Would you like to stay here in future?
We’d been to a festival here before and knew the site here with the castle, which is a beautiful place. It’s South Coast-based and after doing Bestival on the Isle of Wight it made sense, and there’s a lot of cool people in Dorset so we get a lot of locals coming along.
 
Any plans to expand the festival in future or is it the right size?
With day tickets, the site will take more people. There are 2500 coming here just for the day today, so there’s a market there, but I’m not sure we’d want to get a lot bigger.
 
What’s your dream line up?
It’s difficult because I always think of acts I’d like to see at the main Bestival – Kate Bush, Radiohead and The Cure. Things always seem to happen by accident at Camp Bestival. We almost had Little Richard this year and I’d like to carry on the rock and roll theme from having Chuck Berry last year, so we would like Little Richard to play next year.
 
If you had to choose, what’s the one thing you can’t miss this year?
PJ Harvey tonight in the Big Top. It’s the only show she’s doing this year and its going to be a lock out in the tent, but we have big screens outside too. It’s going to be very intimate. She wanted to do an acoustic show in a tent rather than the mainstage, so blame it on her if it goes wrong!
Share and Enjoy:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google Bookmarks
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
  • StumbleUpon
  • Twitter
  • email
  • Fark
  • Netvibes
  • Slashdot
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks
  • Yahoo! Buzz
Tags: , , , ,

About sharonw