Beautiful Days was a great festival by any criteria you care to choose. Beautiful Days is BIG in both scale and imagination. It’s a massive site easily accommodating the 15,000 or so who attend every single year (2014 was again another sell out). There are half a dozen stages, splendid artists from across the musical spectrum, loads for the kids, great site art, first class facilities (yet another big up for Andyloos here!), and more individual ‘scenes’ than you can shake a stick at.

Indeed it’s the wealth of ‘scenes’ that remain in the memory with Beautiful Days 2014. As did the decent weather. Across the whole site you’ll find those special little areas away from the main stage where the festival really does justify its critical acclaim. These spaces are concentration points for the famous Beautiful Days vibe. Many Beautiful Days locations are in essence festivals within festivals – self-contained hot spots, with bands, bars, and all the other absolute necessities!

Just as a fer’ instance take the Bandstand; some great diverse acts like Wille and the Bandits, Mad Dog McRea, Lounge Kittens, The Barsteward Sons of Val Doonican, and even a set of ‘In Conversation with…’ hosted by all round good guy John Robb. It’s surrounded by bars and stalls, and you could, and we did, spend hours there. It’s near The Theatre Tent – a fully blown tiered seated affair easily swallowing a few hundred happy punters. Now here’s the rub … all this sat outside the arena site proper! It would have been easy to have a wonderful weekend at Beautiful Days without even venturing into the arena itself.

Our second Base Camp was discovered near the Little Big Top dance tent … another self-contained little scene. Surrounded by camp fires and surely the most imaginative chimineas on the planet, oh, and just by the bubble machines and oil lanterns! A marvellous space, particularly after midnight where it’s elevated position commanded 360 degree views of the glittering festival lights of beautiful Escot Park. A place to chill, with the beats of the dance tent providing the backing track to unwinding and simply watching the festival world go by. Don’t get me started about the chilled vibe around The Bimble Inn, or the… enough. You get the picture.

The depth of quality of the line-up across all the stages resulted in this reviewer shunning the Main Stage in favour of the said smaller scenes for whole swathes of the day. Another marker for a great festival is the ability to renege on some main stage headliners and not feel like you’ve missed out. We had a ball without watching acts of the calibre of Seasick Steve, Jimmy Cliff, or SEEED. (no, really.)

For Festivals For All the Big Top tent (a simply huge affair) became our epicentre for the weekend … a stunningly diverse array on talent on offer in what effectively is the second stage. Levellers Acoustic, Tinariwen, Cara Dillon, Bellowhead, Steeleye Span, Courtney Pine, Seth Lakeman, Mark Chadwick, 3 Daft Monkeys, et al all graced the Big Top over the weekend. Smashing stuff.

Although the arena opens on Friday, the site opens Thursday afternoon, and it was already packed by tea-time! Appeared the happy punters could not get enough of their Beautiful Days fix.

Although Beautiful Days is the Levellers own bash don’t be fooled for a moment into thinking this is a Leveller centric love-in where the rest of the festival is simply filler between their opening and closing sets. It IS a Levellers audience of course. So expect all ages, all fashions, all types – but with a shared consciousness driven by the bands ethos and values. Wonderful friendly people happy to leave any musical prejudices at the gate, and up for a good time.

As is tradition, the Levellers opened the weekend with a rollocking acoustic set in the Big Top. We again caught a magical show from Cara Dillon Fresh from a fine set at the previous weekend’s Cropredy Festival. A beautiful voice with fine accompaniment from partner Sam Lakeman, marking the first appearance from the entire Lakeman Clan over the weekend.

We hot-footed to the Main Stage for Steve Earle & the Dukes after a wonderful set of Deep South hookie-chookie from Carolina Chocolate Drops. Earle was imperious. Surrounded by some fine musicians, they really stomped it up. Copperhead Road stole the show but an equally fine Galway Girl hit the spot for FFA.

Earlier we’d sampled The Theatre Tent’s delights with a manic comedy show from the very funny Phil Kay. The man has a winning formula; not only does he get paid – but his act also guarantees he goes home drunk! Watch his show next time around and all will be revealed – burp!

Saturday revolved around The Big Top … a truly splendid day. Mark Chadwick regaled an appreciative crowd with tunes from his new album ‘Moment’. As witnessed on a previous outing, the track ‘Bullet’ is destined to become another classic from the man. Great stuff. (Read a recent FFA exclusive interview with Mark Chadwick)

Everything in life is a matter of opinion, but for this reviewer at least, the set of the festival belonged to Kathryn Roberts & Sean Lakeman. An absolute masterclass in how to do it right. Some stunning musicianship from both protagonists, with Robert’s electric piano and flute intertwining superbly with Lakeman’s driving acoustic guitar rhythms. Robert’s voice is an absolute peach, the A Capella moments had the spine tingling. They had a ball and the personal vibe between this pair was genuinely infectious. An absolute pleasure to witness.

Later, Courtney Pine had the crowd eating from his hand. In a nice moment, Pine appeared genuinely appreciative of the opportunity Beautiful Days had provided to bring Jazz to a wider festival audience. So often the poor relation on the festival scene, Jazz, and particularly Pine’s world music / West Indian fused take on the genre, was absolutely adored by the Big Top faithful.

This reviewer’s first mucous heavy punk gig was Dead Kennedys first time around and so we were keen to renew the acquaintance for their main stage set. Oh Dear. Maybe a sense of humour failure or I’ve just grown out of being verbally abused by some aggressive Beavis & Butthead level world view rantings by American front men. Disappointed, we moved on. I guess it’s a case of the Uncool Niece, and what I hope was a presumed attempt at ideological irony simply passed me by on this occasion. Who knows, but “Education Sucks” … oh come on.

Bonus – more of Steeleye Span to enjoy back in the Big Top. Another arguably set of the festival. The band, complete with Maddy Prior’s fine vocals, produced a marvellous set. Their Wintersmith collaboration with Terry Pratchett formed the heart of the show. Some wonderfully evocative songs, complemented with Morris dancers … what more could you want! They finished with an absolutely stonking Bonny Black Hare featuring some awesome slap bass by Rick Kemp before an overrun resulted in the band being almost dragged from the stage and into the night! A great set.

Dilemma City. Seasick Steve or Bellowhead? We were on a roll with the Big Top and opted for Bellowhead – along with thousands of others for what transpired to be an absolutely bouncing night. Excellent show with just the right mix of vaudeville and musical excellence. Splendid evening.

Youtube content courtesy of Fantasy Booth

Sunday … Spitfires over Devon! Another great set from Public Service Broadcasting on the Main Stage before another couple of crackers back at the Big Top. 3 Daft Monkeys were awesome. Joined on stage at one point by Wille Edwards playing lap steel guitar they absolutely nailed it. Great show. Next up, yet another of the Lakeman clan to make an appearance … Seth, AND his Dad! In a set featuring some moving and poignant moments when Lakeman paid homage to events in 1914 & 1944, this was again Lakeman at his best … a festival stalwart, and rightly so – a class act. He was even joined on stage by his dad on a couple of occasions. In what was truly a ‘Lakeman’ weekend it transpired to be Mummy Lakeman’s birthday too!

All that really remained was the Levellers to close the whole shebang, as with Seth Lakeman, the Levellers are masters of the festival set – particularly as they have a greatest hits album in the offing, the set list was always going to be old favourites and so it proved. No Boatman mind. In one of the many homage’s to the horrors of war over the weekend – the guys delivered a particularly apt Another Man’s Cause to great effect.

It’s easy to run out of superlatives to describe the Levellers live … and I have. Let’s just say they more than did the weekend justice. Stunning fireworks sealed an excellent festival. No wonder so many of the attendees will be planning 2015 already.

Article by Barrie Dimond