Into the trees: Bands line up for Wood festival at Braziers Park

If you think music festivals are all about loud music, heavy drinking, sunburn and mud, well... you’d be right. To a point.

For all their cultural pretensions, most commercial music gatherings are still messy affairs. And it was a sense of disappointment with the waste, cost and profit motive associated with bigger festivals that prompted brothers Robin and Joe Bennett to try something different. They came up with a radical alternative: an eco and family-friendly event with a minimal carbon footprint, no corporate branding, and an emphasis on locally-sourced food, drink and even music.

They decided to hold it deep in the woods, with a stage made of wood and they called it... Wood.

“It’s a mix of environmentally-friendly summer camp and a wedding you’ve been invited to where you don’t know the people,” says Robin, who cut his teeth in the festival world by setting up Truck, which still takes place in Steventon every July. He adds: “It’s small scale and personal but it’s still a party. It’s fun, very friendly, green, clean and safe and there’s a lot more things to do than at other festivals.

“It’s pioneering as a green festival and is as much about being in nature as being sustainable.”

In keeping with its green credentials, Wood – which takes place in the Chilterns at Braziers Park near Wallingford – is powered completely by renewable energy, much of it solar. It’s approach has seen it pick up three Greener Festival accolades at the UK Festival Awards. Its composting ‘loos-with-a-view’, meanwhile, have been nominated for Best Toilets, while its children’s activities have earned it a silver award from Festival Kidz.

Brothers in arms: Robin and Joe Bennett

With Wood’s sixth installment getting under way tomorrow, Robin, from East Oxford, and Joe, from Steventon, have been on site, for much of the week, putting in place the infrastructure needed to make a festival for 1,200 people – including up to 400 children – run smoothly.

“As it’s so small scale, we do everything ourselves, with a tolerable level of stress,” Robin smiles.

As ever, the emphasis is on acoustic music, or, as Robin puts it, music that can still be performed without electricity. So while folk and singer-songwriters feature heavily, there is also jazz, blues, world music, indie-rock and Americana.

Headlining on the tree house-like main stage, with its roof of thatch and wild flowers, is singer-songwriter Luke Sital-Singh, and Sweet Baboo – the moniker of North Wales singer Stephen Black. More Welsh talent comes in the shape of Valleyers Providing a burst of freewheeling hedonism are sharp-suited jump-jive party-starters The Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band.

More sedate is singer-songwriter Alessi Laurent–Marke, who plays under the name Alessi’s Ark; Wallingford folk artist Jackie Oates - a former member of the Mercury Prize nominated Rachel Unthank & The Winterset; Londoners My Sad Captains; Sephine Lo; and Bristolian Oliver Wilde.

Also gracing the bill are this year’s Oxford Folk Weekend stars O’Hooley & Tidow, who play gorgeous folk with powerful, thought-provoking lyrics; acoustic husband and wife duo Trevor Moss & Hannah-Lou; indie-rocker-turned children’s singer Nick Cope, formerly of hit band The Candyskins; Reading multi-instrumentalist Edd Keene; Nick Jonah Davis; Rachael Dadd; Witney’s Senegalese kora virtuoso Jali Fily Cissokho; Paul McClure; Vikesh Kapoor; harpist and singer Ellie Ford; world/ jazz act Natureboy and songwriters Trent Miller and Jack Day.

Local talent comes from Knights of Mentis, Julia Meijer, My Crooked Teeth, Art Theefe, Jordan O’Shea, and Oxford Ukuleles.

“We always try to base the line-up on acoustic music,” says Robin. “But there are a few unusual things there too, like the Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band. The only criteria is that each band or artist should have at least one wooden instrument!”

There will also be open sessions from Catweazle Club and The Acoustic Ballroom, and a DJ ‘sett’ (sic) from DJ Badger.

“This Wood we are celebrating the Year of the Badger,” says Robin. “We want to focus on a different wild animal each year and badgers are perfect to kick off our project. They are getting a particularly hard time at the moment with the Government trying to shoot them.

“We will be highlighting their plight as well as all things wonderful about them. And we are encouraging people to come in black and white stripes. There could be a free coffee in it if they do.”

Fans of Cowley band Stornoway will be treated to songs and wild fowl stories from the band’s duck-loving frontman Brian Briggs, and a set by bandmate Oli Steadman’s Zulu-inspired side project Count Drachma.

As well as organising the event, Robin and Joe will grace the stage with their country-rock band The Dreaming Spires. Joe also plays alongside singer-songwriter Mike Gale in Americana band Co-Pilgrim.

Musical missionaries: Co-Pilgrim

Away from the stage, there will be a programme of workshops and courses covering everything from twig sculptures and den building for kids, through to nature walks, knot tying, rug making, woodworking, African drumming, and wormery making.

Singer, pianist and composer Stuart Macbeth, from South Oxford, is frontman of the Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band. He said: “The Bennett brothers have created something unique with Wood, and I’m told it’s one of the best festivals around. Although when they told me we were playing in a tree house I nearly fell off my chair!”

Get involved
Wood festival runs this weekend at Braziers Park, near Wallingford. Weekend tickets are £75 including camping. Day tickets also available. Children aged 12 and under go free, if with an adult.
See woodfestival.com or go to Truck Store, Oxford.

Luke's music comes from the heart

LUKE Sital-Singh describes himself as an “acoustic, melancholy singer-songwriter”. But that’s to seriously underplay an artist gifted with one of the country’s most beautiful voices.
Tomorrow the London singer-songwriter tops the bill at Wood festival – his first festival headline slot. The show will see him performing songs from his still untitled debut album, which is due out later this year.

Best known for his 2012 debut Fail For You, Luke has gone on to charm with follow-up EPs Old Flint and Tornados and this year’s single Greatest Lovers. All carry his unmistakable down-tempo style but are enlivened by life-affirming lyrics.

“There’s a melancholy to my music, but lyrically I try to be hopeful,” he says while relaxing in trendy Shoreditch, earlier this week. “My songs have a clear message – and are written to give myself a bit of advice.

“When I’m trying to write a song that fits my repertoire, I find it hard to do anything upbeat. I don’t want to be chipper or to tell people to ‘cheer up’. That’s not why I listen to music. Music that tries to make people feel happy is annoying. When I write, I am saying ‘it’s all right to feel like that’. You’ve got to be true to your emotions.”