Oxford band Stornoway to perform at Truck festival

This weekend more than 5,000 music-lovers and artists will make a pilgrimage to a South Oxfordshire farm for an event which has been a highlight of the county’s musical calendar.

Since its launch 17 years ago, Truck festival, held at Hill Farm, Steventon, has showcased the best new and local bands, as well as a clutch of big international stars. More than 150 bands will play its six stages tomorrow and Saturday. And while many will be playing the festival for the first time, for one group of Oxford lads it will be an emotional homecoming.

Among the city’s best-loved bands folk-pop act Stornoway started life playing those very fields. Since then frontman Brian Briggs; keyboard player Jon Ouin, bassist Oli Steadman and his brother, drummer Rob, have travelled the world, hitting dizzying heights and winning over crowds everywhere from Glastonbury to Oxford Town Hall.

But, says Brian, Truck still has a magic pull for the band, who famously broke through after becoming the first unsigned band to appear on TV’s Later… with Jools Holland.

“Truck was our first festival, so it’s great to be going back,” says Brian.

“I still remember how exciting it was to play it for the first time,” he recalls. “We were supposed to play a little stage but the site flooded and get moved to Oxford Brookes University — where we ended up supporting the headliners Brian Jones Town Massacre — whose frontman kept prodding us with an umbrella and threatened to break all our bones!”

“The festival has changed since then, but it still has the same spirit and we are looking forward to it.”

Brian is taking some time out at Stornoway HQ — a garage in Cowley, where he has been hammering out a clutch of tunes with his band-mates — and Rob and Ollie’s Patterdale terriers Picu and Cassidy (“he’s only got two legs that work,” he laughs. Fortunately, they happen to be the front ones”).

Four years after the release of their Top 20 debut Beachcombers Windowsill, and a year on from their Top 30 follow-up Tales from Terra Firma, Stornoway are coming back with their third full length album, due for release early next year.

“Recording is a priority now,” says Brian. “We’ve done half already. But we are also playing a few festivals — not least Truck — so are very busy.”

What does it sound like?

“It is more outdoors folk-pop music,” says Brian — a keen nature-lover with a doctorate in duck ecology.

“Our sound is shaped by emotions and lyrics. It is quite personal and features storytelling against an outdoor backdrop.

“We always feature the outdoors in our songs; it’s a big inspiration and we match those inspirations with acoustic and electric instruments and end up with a hint of folk. We are not afraid to use a whole range of instruments.”

A clutch of the new songs — including Lost Youth, Sing With Our Senses, The Road You Didn’t Take, Man On The Wire and Love Song Of The Beta Male — will be aired at Truck and at a coveted headline set at London’s Roundhouse on August 13.

For the as-yet untitled album they have also teamed up with a producer — Gil Norton, who has previously worked with Pixies and Foo Fighters.

“It’s the first time we’ve done it this way,” says Brian. “It’s been interesting. It’s also far more efficient in that we actually get multiple songs recorded in a week rather than a month. It has been hard, as we are control freaks, but it’s working well.”

While previous albums were released through 4AD records, for their latest project they are trying a different route. Instead of hooking up with a label, they are funding it via a crowd-sourcing process through PledgeMusic. In return for pledges, fans get to be the first to hear the album, and spend time with the band — engaging in experiences such as Zorbing, birdwatching or playing special acoustic shows.

Admirers jumped at the chance, with the band earning double their target in under a week. And, says Brian, that was largely down to Oxford fans.

“It’s a way of getting the fans involved in making the album,” he says. “It’s been really nice to reconnect with fans in that way.

“When you are working through a record label it distances you as fans don’t have anything to do with it. It’s great we’ve got a lot of support out there — especially in Oxford.”

He says the band remain indebted to their local fans, who have followed them since their early days at Truck festival, and their seminal gigs at Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre in 2009, and their album launch parties at the diminutive A1 Pool Hall in Cowley Road and twin shows at the somewhat grander Oxford Town Hall.

“We’ve had our fair share of luck, like Jools Holland, playing the Radio 1 Big Weekend and winning the Glastonbury Emerging Talent competition,” says Brian. “But they only happened because of the steps we made before.

“Different bands take different roots, and it is a funny, fickle game. But we just played loads of gigs and people came to us. We’ve never particularly had an eye on the latest sound. We just do what we do.

“Our music has an appeal which is timeless. It’s acoustic and fairly natural and I don’t think people get tired of that. Also, we don’t try to be cool. We are effortlessly cool... or, rather, effortlessly uncool!”

And what can we expect from their set? “We are going to throw in a couple of upbeat new songs and a sea shanty with four-part harmonies,” he says. “But there will also be all the old favourites — like Zorbing.

“We will be there to have a good time. We love festivals and our music suits the outdoors. We are really looking forward to it.”

Stornoway
Truck festival, Hill Farm, Steventon
Saturday
Tickets have sold out