Indietracks - Day 1

Indietracks (www.indietracks.com) is the annual indiepop festival at Midland Railway in Butterly, Derbyshire. 2008 was the 2nd year Mike & I attended the festival and the weather was gorgeous! There were about 1,100 people there and 67 bands on 4 stages (main stage, chapel, outdoor & on a train!) plus late night discos. We went to Derbyshire with Becky, Sam & Anthony and had a blast! On Saturday I saw 12 bands... check them out below:


First up on the outdoor stage (in a lorry) was Slow Down Tallahasse (from Sheffield)


Next I hit the main stage in the train hanger for Tortoise Shout!


And back outside for some amazing lyrics by Darren Hanlon from Sydney, Australia


Hanging out with our favourite band of the festival - Red Pony Clock (from San Diego). Mike's with Jan, Hannah, Nick & Gerry.


And The Zebras from Melbourne (we saw them Tuesday in Birmingham too)


The Parallelograms


And my first show in the Chapel - its The Roadside Poppies (half from Cambridge and half from Copenhagen). I got to talking to Martin White (the guy in the middle with the mic) over the weekend and he's this super-nice guy with a Phd from Cambridge who's a scientist on the team working on the new particle accelerator in Geneva!


My favourite member of The Pocketbooks (from London) - Ian


Look at all the peeps watching The Pocketbooks!


Back outside to enjoy the weather with Duncan and Debbie from Birmingham


And we finally met up with Anthony, Sam & Becky outside. They were dutifully putting up our tent while Mike and I were watching bands...


And its Red Pony Clock time - Chicken, Gabe, Malina & Sam

Gerry, Jane, Chicken, Gabe & Malina

Gerry, Martin & Jane

And Hannah, who's so much more than the RPC merch girl!


Airport Girl are a Nottingham band and I accidentally cut off Sean (to the right of the picture) who we've seen in the Cut-Outs and he runs Fortuna Pop! And we gave the guy on the left a ride to the festival from the bottom of the hill and now feel better that he's well rested for his set.


Ray 'I used to be on the dole in Dudley but now I live in the Lake District', Duncan & Ian from Horowitz dancing in the front row to Airport Girl.


Mike & Gabe


The Kabeedies from Norwich. They gave out a free CD after their set.


Anthony, Becky, Sam & Mike


This was supposed to be Comet Gain, but i think it was actually Shrag filling in and the guy singing is just the girl behind him's boyfriend who jumped on stage. What a mess - at the time I thought it was Comet Gain who didn't show and no one said they were a different band! Argh!


This is Stuart (on the right). He organises Indietracks. Hurray for Stuart!


Mike, Gerry & Jen making the scary faces. Mike doesn't seem to get it...


Mike, Jen & Chicken. But check out the Carnival of Food behind us!


Jen 'I've got a burger from the Carnival of Food' and Martin


Inside the sweaty, hot hanger watching the headliner - The Wedding Present.


And its... The Wedding Present!


Back at the campsite drinking wine and Carlsberg - Anthony & Becky


Chicken, Jen, Martin & Sanjeep

Indietracks - Day 2

Day 2 (Sunday, July 27th) of Indietracks started with waking up early in the tent because it was so HOT out! Hurray - a beautiful rain-free day. Becky has this great 2-bedroom tent which was fantastic but we got the campground without showers so it will be a greasy, sweaty, showerless day at the festival.

Red Pony Clock didn't have a tent so they slept outside ours... they were a bit chilly in the early hours but I think they made it okay.



First band of the day - The Colliding Lemons - a 5-piece girl band from Bristol


Next was our first and only band on the train. Its acoustic Winston Echo (aka Chris and his buddy Rob). The train was HOT but we had a blast!!



Back to the main stage for Brontosaurus Chorus an 8-member London band.


And back to the Chapel stage for The Good Natured with electroacoustic disco beats hailing from Newbury.


This is when the schedule gets all messed up and all the bands and times and stages are switched around... I think this is Mai 68s from Leicester.



The Candy Twins (sorry the cowboy drummer got cut out of the pic!)


A Classic Education - made up of mostly Italians!


Mono Taxi hails from London but is an Anglo-French combo.


The Foster Kids are from Norwich and were fantastic!


KateGoes is from Birmingham and they are completely mad and they come up with a theme for every performance. This is Kate Goes to the Stoneage.


Followed by madness with the balloons...


The Occasional Flickers came all the way from the Greek indiepop scene!


Burlington, Vermont's 'The Smittens' with David, Max, Dana & Colin (Holly the keyboardist is way on the left!) Mike's played with them a few times in the States and we saw them in Birmingham on Tuesday too.


The Wave Pictures (current London residents) played some songs Becky & Sam had actually heard of before!


Glascow band - The Starlets


My photography skills are getting worse - this is Manhattan Love Suicide - one of the main bands Mike came to see at the festival. They played an extremely short set and quickly exited.


The Deidres - 7 oddballs from Derby.


American John from Amida. Amida is from Manchester but I saw them play in Birmingham and us Americans stick together!



Darren Hanlon (of Sydney) & Colin (of the Vermont-based Smittens) playing in the acoustic tent. It was so nice and shady in there and we were all sitting on cushions on the grass...




The Roadside Poppies' Martin & Matloob with our friend Sanjeep who met Matloob last week at the Rip it Up indiepop festival in Sweden - crazy!



Jen & Colin


Peter Dale of Milky Whimpshake - amazing! I wish I had gotten here early to see his solo act this morning on the train. The band is from Newcastle and was a great surprise favorite for me especially their song 'I want to be scene in public with you.'


Ian & Jen - saying our goodbyes until the next show.


Mike & I left at 7pm to head back to Birmingham since we had work in the morning. We wish we could've stayed for another 3+ hours and checked out Ballboy, the Retro Spankees and headliners Los Campesinos! But we had a great weekend and got home in time to watch Carlos Sastre from team CSC win the Tour de France!