Truckin' around - Truck's Robin Bennett

United Kingdom | | 18 April 2008

Now held over two days, the festival which started with bands playing out of a truck, now welcomes some 5,000 revellers in 2008 as well as sets from Maps, These New Puritans, Emmy The Great and Noah and The Whale.

Founded by Robin Bennett and his brother Joe in 1998, Truck has since been held every July at Hill Farm in Steventon Cheshire, with the exception of 2007 that is. Last year a strike of severe flooding just hours before kick off caused a complete wash out. The bash was forced a two-day event at Oxford Brookes University, before Robin rescheduled Truck for September - and even then he nearly missed it.

You would think after all that he'd be thinking of packing it all in, but instead Robin and the Truck crew are not only busy planning the next festival, but a new three-day event called Wood as well.

Preceding its older sister, Wood is striving to be the greenest festival around, whilst still providing an eclectic roster of acts Truck wouldn't mind boasting about. Hoping all goes according to plan this year, the ambitious festival organiser spoke to Virtual Festivals to lift the lid on the future of Truck and everything Wood.

Virtual Festivals: Even after the nightmare of Truck 2007, you've announced an additional event called Wood...
Robin Bennett: "My wife gave birth on the morning of the rescheduled Truck Fest last year so I wanted to devise a festival that you could take families to. I was 19 when we started Truck in 1998. I'm from the village and my whole family has always been heavily involved in the festival. There was a lot of flooding in the area last July and in worrying about the farm where the festival is held, we didn't realise that my family's house had been destroyed! Some bands were already over from America including The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Garth Hudson. Plus a seventy year old guy, who had just flown over from Woodstock, so we thought we had better give them something to do and distracted ourselves from the flood damage by organising a gig at Oxford Brookes University over the same weekend. Of course most people couldn't travel so only about a thousand made it and by the Sunday all the lower parts of Oxford were flooded. Everyone was amazed that we had managed to put on a two day gig. Our area had never really flooded before so it was unexpected. The Brian Jonestown Massacre were very good about it all, they offered to come and help fix the house."

VF: What was the inspiration for Wood?
RB: "We're hoping to make Wood the greenest festival ever. It is debatable what is green and what isn't, but we're just trying to have it connected to the earth in as many ways as we can. The stage is solar powered and made of wood, all the food and showers will be heated by wood-burning stoves and we're encouraging people to cycle to the festival. It is much more than just a music festival. There will be lots of activities and opportunities for people to get involved; arts and crafts workshops, hay bale construction and we're even going to have scientists talking about climate change. The music will be mostly acoustic, Ashley Hutchings from Fairport Convention and Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly will be performing solo. Hopefully there will be enough sunlight to keep the sound system going! Wood is a symbol of new life and we were quite traumatised after all the floods so before we did another Truck we wanted to try and do something new to shift the attention. The success of the gigs and rescheduled Truck Fest in September helped, although my son was being born six weeks early so I actually spent the weekend running between an intensive care ward and the farm. Truck ran amazingly smoothly, we lost some of the American bands but Foals, who were not on the original July line-up, were ready to play by September and we were able to use the same site, 90% of the same bands and people."

VF: What is unique about Truck?
RB: "Truck is a very small, no frills festival. Obviously it gets more professional but we're still using the truck for the main stage and the 'Barn That Cannot Be Named' is an actual cowshed. There are six stages altogether but the others are tents. Foals were scheduled to play in a really small tent but that would have turned into a riot so we had to put them in the cowshed which was still a bit of a riot. It can be dangerous so we're trying to put acts on the right sized stage. Truck is like a village fete but with 5,000 music fans. There are no catering concessions, with all the catering done by the local rotary clubs. The bar staff give all their proceeds to charity and we still have the vicar who sells ice-creams. He’s quite famous now."

VF: Truck has a reputation for showcasing the best independent new music, coming through from the underground. Was that the intention from the beginning or did it evolve?
RB: "It has evolved. I was playing in my band, Goldrush and we did quite well, we met other good bands who wanted to come and play Truck and after three or four years the line-up was getting really good. A lot of bands used the recording studio on the farm, then came back for the festival and we had a record label too, but we've stopped doing that for the moment. They are all aspects of what we do so it came together really naturally."

VF: What have been some of your best moments over the years?
RB: "For me it's anything that involved playing. I used to really idolise The Band and provided backing for Garth Hudson. He's a phenomenal keyboard player, so that was magic."

VF: Do you book the bands yourself?
RB: "I have some of the time but different people have done it over the years. This year there are three or four people booking stages. Maps are headlining the Sonic Cathedral stage and These New Puritans are also playing. We'll go with some unusual things on the main stage but we’re still working on that."

VF: Has the capacity always been around 5,000 or has it built up?
RB: "It's been more or less exactly the same. I would never say never about anything but you've got to be careful of changing a winning formula. The problem we've stumbled on is the fact that the limit is the limit for the space. The farm is huge but most of it is crops. In the first instance I went to the farmer and told him a few friends and I wanted to have a little party. I deliberately under sold it to him so he would say yes. They make £30,000 each year and give it all to charity. The farmer is a member of the rotary club so he will actually be flipping burgers on the farm!"

VF: The festivals that attract attention seem to be the ones that are doing something slightly differently and pushing boundaries. Do you think this is the future of festivals?
RB: "At Glastonbury they have The Green Fields but it's very hard to operate on a massive scale because they need a lot of resources and create a lot of mess and waste. Wood is only going to have a capacity of one thousand and we're going to try and source all the food organically from within the county, including the meat. It will be held at Braziers Park in the Chiltern Hills which is a spiritual place and the ideal setting for Wood. There is a campsite which already has compost and a number of toilets, so all we're doing is adding a few extra ones and we're bringing our own stage and Yurts."

VF: It's the same weekend as The Great Escape, have there been any issues in terms of getting bands?
RB: "It's actually helpful; we've got one or two bands coming from that. It's interesting because people that might be interested in Wood are not necessarily the people who would come to Truck although we have got Lightspeed Champion playing at Wood. I'd like to think it will be a very mixed crowd like at Truck and at Wood we want to push that even further. Some people from a marketing background who didn't know much about music came to Truck and asked what the demographic was because there were toddlers and old grannies, but why would you want to go and hang around people your own age?"

VF: Where do you see Truck going in future? It doesn't sound like it needs to be changed in anyway...
RB: "When I started Truck there wasn't a big demand for festivals so it wasn't the obvious thing to do at the time. Now there are five festivals in Oxfordshire in July and five major festivals on our weekend. I think you always have to change gradually but sometimes dramatically."