Beautiful Days festival 2013 – review

Image: Beautiful Days Festival

Ever wondered what happens to a band when its star starts to wane? When records sales dry up bands tend to find it hard to keep up the momentum and their members go their separate ways. In the early 2000’s an anthemic rock / folk band that had come to prominence in the Britpop era looked like it could be on the cusp of realizing this trend. Instead of admitting defeat they did something quite special; they created one of the UK’s best medium sized festivals, a festival which is now in its 11th year, the festival is of course Beautiful Days.

The thing that makes this festival really unique is probably fairly peculiar to Beautiful Days: the Levellers’ desire to create an event more in line with the less-commercialised gatherings of their youths, as well as the needs of the Levellers’ original fan base. The result is arguably the most laid back, family friendly festival in the UK.

Like many of the Levellers’ original devotees I’m of a certain age, and I turned up to the South Devon festival with my wife, young son and about 3 tonnes of baggage, wondering what my teenage self would have made of my more sedate festival experiences of recent years.

To be clear, there are two things I hate about festivalling with a young child, the first is keeping them entertained, the second is the cost of keeping them fed and watered. Fortunately Beautiful Days has got this covered.

Those lucky enough to get tickets to the sold-out soiree can’t fail to have taken note of the kids’ area, it’s by far the biggest I’ve witnessed at a festival and tellingly the Childrens’ Area isn’t pushed away in one corner, it’s positioned at the very heart of the action, in fact you had to pretty much walk through it from the main stage to the secondary arena, the Big Top.

There were constantly things for the little ones to do, from children’s theatre through to ceramics, woodworking, metalworking plus loads of brightly coloured entertainers wandering around ready to help out overwrought looking parents. If you’ve got a slightly older family then your needs are hooked up too, with a tent for teens full of guitars and bean bags - although as you can imagine, most of the teens were out in the crowds having the time of their lives.

As for the costs, the drinks were cheaper than at most festivals and the food on the whole was better value than elsewhere. I challenge you to go to a modern festival and find substantial food options for less than a fiver - at Beautiful Days there was plenty of things on offer for a just a few pounds.

So that’s the sensible bit out of the way, I did manage to cut lose and have some festival time to myself and despite the family friendly nature of the festival if you’re looking for a bit of craziness, Beautiful Days has it in spades, from a trippy, hippy mushroom-tastic tent where stories were being told until the early hours of the morning to the festival’s massive dance tent (perhaps ironically called the Little Big Top), which really was the place to be after midnight.

The festival site is massive and the arena and stages are well spread out which means each day you get the sense of discovering an experience anew - there really was something for everyone.

One of my favourite moments was watching a young folk artist by the name of Gaz Brookfield who took the slot before tongue-in-cheek folk favourites, The Lancashire Hotpots, and who seemed genuinely blown away by the reaction of the audience and the realisation that he had them eating out of his hands. His thanks for the support of the Levellers was heartfelt and was a recurring sentiment of the acts throughout the weekend.
With many of the acts equally as gracious in gratitude towards the Levellers for career involvement, it seems they’ve become the Godfathers of the music scene in the South West, apparently spending time nurturing new acts whilst providing them with one of the biggest stages to tout their wares.

The fairly colourful costumes worn by the entertainers wandering around the festival were surpassed on the final day by the sea of festival goers sporting fancy dress. This year was an animal themed dress code and the number of animal patterned onesies getting an outing surely demonstrated how much the festival goers have bought into the spirit of the festival.

The Levellers closed proceedings and although Ocean Colour Scene and Primal Scream had headlined the two previous night’s respectively, it’s fair to say this is The Levellers’ show and they played it out to a packed out arena, with their 90s classics (that suddenly seemed timeless), including ‘What a Beautiful Day’, ‘One Way’, ‘This Garden’, and ‘Carry Me’, with a grand finale a firework display that made London’s New Year’s Eve celebrations look like a shabby back-garden affair in comparison.

Although I’m sure it’s not intentional, it’s interesting to note the festival falls on the same weekend as V Festival - you really couldn’t get two more opposite festivals. If it was a case of choosing between the two festivals, my teenage-self may have chosen V, but after one weekend, I’ve become a Beautiful Days believer.