We had a fantastic day hosting the Sparrow Park Outdoor Stage for the Leek Blues & Americana Festival. We were so honoured and proud to help sponsor and support such a great event that runs throughout our awesome town of Leek for a full 5 days with music in nearly every venue and location in Leek. And where there was no venue like at Sparrow Park we made our own. What helped make it special was to also be part of the Totally Local Leek Sunday Supplement Market, which always brings a great atmosphere and vide to the town.
Firstly, a massive thank you from us to Julie, Dave and JR for their immense effort in puling all of this together, and to all the volunteers who also helped out to make it such a huge success.
We were blessed with great weather for the day, especially after the rain earlier in the week, although it started to get a wee bit nippy in the afternoon, I think that’s why the Jake Leg Jug Bands songs were getting quicker lol.
The day kicked off with a chilled vibe from the talented Heidi Browne, who’s has five albums out, which are available to purchase from her website www.heidibrowne.com
Next up we had Derby born and breed Lil Jim with is amazing accordion skills but not as you know it.
Lil Jim who was voted best accordion player in Europe upped the tempo as the crowd grew with his up tempo cajun sounds, our particular fav was an awesome rendition of Annie Lennoxs, Sweet Dreams.
Headlining and finishing off an awesome day we had Jake Leg Jug Band with their mix of 1920 & 1930 probation music, these guys and gal not only sounded amazing but also looked amazing.
All in all, we had such an amazing day and it was a privilege to be part of such a great event held in our town. We were also honoured to be supporting the Leek & District Food Bank by having collection buckets and a food basket available for folks to make donation. After a quick count its looking like we’ve raised £170 which is fantastic, thank you so much.
It’s important to remember that events like this don’t happen on their own and if it wasn’t for the generous, time, equipment and resources people volunteer these events really wouldn’t happen. Our sound was provided by Swog and Shaun of Perfect Audio who kept things sounding great all day. The Stage was lent to us by Westwood first school and was swiftly erected by a team of volunteers who also stayed around all day to help make the day run as smoothly as it did, Dave, Kev, Duncan, Jon, and Graham who also collected, returned and stored the stage until we needed to use it, Thank you. Chairs were borrowed from the Friends of Brough Park, the marquee and table and bench from local business British Boxers, and thanks to Marc from Totally Locally Leek, Sunday Supplement, who provided barriers, space, and the awesome guys from www.brewboxbar.co.uk who were on hand to quench our firsts and steady my nerves when hosting!!
So without this starting to sound like an awards speak I’ll end it here, but we can’t say enough how much of a great day we had, let’s do it all again next year. Please make sure you click on all the links and check everyone out :)
Matt