Sunday 24th August – Concur play Leeds Fest

Another early 9am start. Surprisingly we all seem to feel pretty good, except Tim who lost the plot on the guest bar dance floor last night. From what I can see of the curled up red sweaty mess on the tent floor he looks pretty rough.

We head to the Introducing stage and emotionally hook up with Alan and Katy from the BBC Raw Talent team who helped get us here. We sort out the tech stuff and everything seems to be pretty good. Tim eventually turns up and we’re ready to go. An amazing weekend is pretty complete when we have another really good gig. The crowd are just brilliant and it’s one of the biggest buzzes ever!

Finally we can relax proper. We do various interviews and photo shoots for the BBC.before chilling out backstage. After checking out Los Campesinos! and Foals we head back to the Introducing stage to do one final interview with the Raw Talent guys. Alan Raw’s on top form and I recommend having a listen to the interview we did with him. We’re not normally on such good form when a mic is put in front of us.

From then on it all gets a bit hazy. We get drunk, dance a bit and even end up in the silent disco before turning it in. All in all it’s been wonderful. Happy days to be in I Concur.

Saturday 23rd August – Concur play Reading Fest

I’ve never been awake before 9am at a festival before but then I guess I’ve never played one with my own band before. Reading is hot today. Very hot. No need for wellies either. Perfect.

We head to Gate Charlie and meet our Artist Liaison for the day, Hayley. She’s lovely and sorts us out with beer and water. Our stage manager, Pop, a giant of a man with neon orange dreadlocks is lovely too and we breeze through our sound check. You can just tell that we’re going to have a good gig.

We’re met by a few friends out the front of the stage and they wish us well before we head to a Radio 1 interview and then launch ourselves on stage. The gig’s spot on. Great fun. The short set works a treat: Captors, Able Archer, Sobotka, Build Around Me and Oblige.

We chill out in the guest bar and grab something to eat before running into Huw Stephens behind the Introducing stage. He’s seen our Oblige flyers and is even genned up on the date the single’s released. Good man.

We set off from Reading to get back to Leeds before it gets dark. Unfortunately we hadn’t planned on taking the wrong exit out of the festival and before we know it the van’s stuck in a sea of festival goers at the front gates! The crazy Scottish security guys, rather than simply sending us back the way we came, start moving the crowd and all the gates to one side. It’s carnage as we drive the van across rocks and people start diving out of the way. Once we get to the road the security guys realise it’s sealed off by metal gates which they can’t move. We then have to reverse the van down the pavement between several lamp posts and touts before finally finding a gap at the side of the road and escaping the crazyness.

When we get back to Leeds we begin to chill for the first time this weekend. All our friends are there so a fair few beers are knocked back, mainly by Tim, and we check out Dans Le Sac who’s pretty ace. After avoiding several ligging mediocre pop stars and TV presenters we head to bed.

Friday 22nd August - getting to Reading

We get up in decent time and head to watch local lads Eureka Machines kick off the fest. Mega professional as always. When the rain kicks in head to see Yeasayer in the NME/Radio1 tent. Ace set.

It’s time to go to Reading so, after meeting the remaining members of the Concur that didn’t camp on Thursday night (that’s all of them but me!), we all pile into the Vessels’ van. Martin’s brought his fully inflated air bed and forgotten to take his mountain bike out (“what the ***!”). These two essential items take up much more room than any of our gear. Teff’s going to be great value for money this weekend.

Within an hour we’re stuck, permanently, on the M1. A detour through the delights of Chesterfield ensues and we fall two to three hours behind schedule. Are we going to make to Reading in time to see Rage Against the Machine. Probably not. At least I get some kip.

We’re welcomed to Reading by the crazy Scottish security guards who make the Leeds Festival security look like Masterminds (more about these guys later). The Reading site is right in the middle of the town in what seems to be a golf course or race track of some kind. All very odd. Toby’s loving it. He’s been here before and he seems very at home. The rest of us feel a bit like aliens.

After watching Minor Complaint Against The Machine (the sound quality really was that bad!) we head to the guest bar to hand out flyers and get mildly drunk. We then set up camp next to the lovely Johnny Foreigner crew and head to bed to get a good night’s sleep before tomorrow’s gig. Unfortunately the good kip doesn’t happen thanks to drunken idiots falling over my tent. Ah well, it’s all fun really.

Thursday 21st August - set up camp at Leeds Fest

We’re late getting to Leeds Festival. Our van driver for the weekend, Mr Martin Teff of Vessels fame, is, completely out of character for him, faffing around. We’re gonna hit the A64 traffic and have to put our massive Concur tent up in the dark. Indeed, after an infuriating mission trying to get in and out of the artists’ car park (good old uninformed fest security) this is the case. It’s all stress, but at least we’re finally here. Thanks to superhuman Sandman Ed Rob Wright we get the tent up, “have you got planning permission for that?!?”, and head to watch the Dance To The Radio stage.

We witness the end of the Pigeon Detectives’ secret gig and hook up with the Brew Records crew and Teff’s sister Helen before getting the (incredibly expensive) food in and enjoying Grammatics. The site is really really really muddy. It’s going to be a wellies weekend!

Concur’s Leeds and Reading blog

We decided to do a blog of the festivals. Here it is....

We love Huw Stephens (NME)

Small fish, big pond