Louder Than Words festival

Louder Than Words celebrates that essential, magical relationship between music and writing. Whether Guy Garvey talking lyrics; Edwyn Collins performing his own music or Hugh Cornwell talking about life in The Stranglers, the Festival has something for anyone with a love for music, and the way words are used to inform and contribute to its melody.

Taking in Q&As, panel discussions and workshops the Festival, now in its fourth year, is back at the gorgeous Palace Hotel, Manchester, which itself has benefited from a multi-million-pound refurb since last year’s event. A beacon of popular culture, the Festival draws important music personalities to Manchester for one weekend, as well as an audience from as far afield as San Francisco and Moscow. The full weekend program is now available from www.louderthanwordsfest.com and a few particular highlights are listed below:

· Friday - 6.30pm til 11.30

The weekend kicks off with a reading, conversation with and performance by Brix Smith-Start, ex member of The Fall; a Punk@40 panel; and Rebekka Kill’s fascinating ‘Facebook is like Disco, Punk is like Twitter’ performance, before Rebekka herself steps up to the decks to provide the soundtrack to the launch party.

· Saturday - 10.00am til 11.30pm

Saturday includes Woody Woodmansey (after the death of David Bowie the last surviving Spider from Mars); Q&As with Funky Si Wolstencroft, Kristin Hersh of The Throwing Muses, the band Thunder, and Eleanor McEvoy discussing her music and artistic collaboration with Chris Gollon.

· Sunday - 10.00am til 6.30pm

Penny Rimbaud and Steve Ignorant separately add a certain (and very welcome) Crass tone to Louder’s Sunday Service, building up through several events to Wolfgang Flur, the founding member of Kraftwerk, releasing his inner robot. 

Across the weekend journalists and authors such as Barney Hoskyns, Zoe Howe and Matthew Collin discuss their work; there are panels looking into everything from rock to rave; mod to grunge; Chris Jam brings Slam Poetry to Louder, and Un-convention explores the notion of ‘doing it together’. For those interested more in getting involved with the music business, there are also workshops, as well as The Wilko Johnson Writing Award for those under 25 who want to try their own hand at music journalism.

Across the board, then, there is something for everyone, whether aspiring music scribe or established music maker, with over 40 separate events over the weekend in four different rooms within the hotel (not forgetting the bar!) 

Hear stories of rock & roll decadence and deferring-do get books signed… get up close and personal with your musical heroes. Mark the November 11-13 weekend in your diary. It might get Loud…