Oliver survives the SXSC Festival

We both smiled at such a ridiculous idea, then both did a double take and said, shit, why not? Each summer is littered with the fallout from such grandiose ideas, but we realized straight away that what we had in mind wasn’t the sort of heavily-indebted, big-field event that the word festival conjures up, but quite possibly the word’s smallest festival. The reason it was feasible? The unique venue that is the Railway.

I hold no brief whatever for the Railway but I’m happy to say I love the place. Since we started SXSC in 2003 in order to bring US and Canadian artists to Winchester, its unique atmosphere, great sound and delightful staff have made every single show a delight. Whenever we have a sell-out, we suggest to the bands in question that next time, we might use a bigger venue. No way, is always the reply, we want to play right here.

For the festival, it was obvious what we could do. The main room would be for loud, electric bands, while the upstairs bar was ripe for conversion into what we called an “acoustic lounge”. The garden, meanwhile, with its twinkling lights and rustic decking, would be ideal for providing the festival vibe, and if it pissed down with rain, who cared? There would be plenty of room inside.

So with one final hurdle negotiated (the approval of my wife, who would be heavily involved), we arranged a meeting with the aforementioned Railway staff, who in their normal unflappable way, simply answered “Yes, of course” to every single question we asked. We were up and running.

Selecting the supporting cast was a doddle, because over the years, we had built up a pool of superb support acts, pretty much all of whom we wanted to invite. Number One on the list was Chris TT, a friend of ours who is always guaranteed to put on a fiery show. So that was our acoustic headliner sorted. Then we started thinking of others with Winchester connections and invited Whalebone Polly. Kate and Rachael have both moved on to other pastures but were keen to re-visit their roots.

From nearby Andover came Owen Tromans, an artist we have formed a strong relationship with, and we couldn’t resist asking Jason McNiff, who has also graced our stage on several occasions.

One artist who obviously had to be there was Peter Bruntnell. Peter starred in our first ever show and has returned on many occasions. We view him as our lucky mascot and he has never let us down. From the same Devon village as Peter comes Jim Jones, a massively under-rated singer-songwriter who shares some band members with Peter, so we invited him as well.

At this stage I think we began to feel a little over-confident. Either Peter Bruntnell or Richmond Fontaine would normally sell out the Railway on their own, so we figured that if we had them both on the bill, it would be a guaranteed sell-out. What we hadn’t banked on was that Peter subsequently would be booked to open on the entire tour, which meant that our unique selling point was no more. So we added a couple more acts, namely Bristol’s Beatnik Filmstars, whom we had never seen but came highly recommended, plus a “supergroup” of friends of SXSC, calling themselves the SXSC House Band.

I had now become obsessed with trying to get some more “big names” to make the bill look more “cool”. The first one I tried to get, in a to-and-fro with the agent which lasted months, was Peter Broderick, whom I had seen, and loved, in Austin. Lengthy negotiations about price resulted in an eventual agreement, only for the agent to decide he was going to book him into a different venue in Manchester, and fail to inform me. Yes, this is the kind of thing you have to accept from agents, a breed who often seem to have little connection with the real world.

I then moved on to the excellent Leisure Society, who were already booked, before failing, for price reasons, to secure a brilliant band from Glasgow called the Phantom Band. Then it turned out that Willard Grant Conspiracy were playing in Wales the night before and might have been able to fit us in, but a series of misunderstandings about price eventually led me to lose my megalomania and settle for the bill we had.

The next thing to think about was publicity, for which we had no budget. I did a deal with a local printer for flyers and posters in exchange for mentioning them on the publicity, and then made a similar arrangement with the local newspaper. They weren’t willing to do a swop for an advert, but were willing to write some articles, which was very helpful. Finally, I did something similar with the local arts centre in exchange for a stage banner, although this never actually materialised. They did allow us access to their mailing list, however.

Trying to get national coverage failed completely. I must have wasted hours sending out information to the music press and the national papers, but no coverage ensued. In the end, the BBC South website kindly came up with a page and the Guardian mentioned it in their Guide, but both these were last-minute aids.

I had been convinced we would sell out way in advance on the strength of our mailing list, but to our shock and concern, this didn’t happen. I think this may have been partly down to the fact that Richmond Fontaine’s tour turned out to be far more extensive that we had thought it would be, so an element of exclusivity was missing. Anyway, a week before the festival we still had tickets to sell and mild panic set in (with me, at least; everyone else was completely calm, saying there was bound to be “walk-up”). In my mind, nobody “walks up” to a festival. But predictably, on the last day, suddenly the phone was ringing like crazy with people begging for tickets. A glitch in the Ticketweb system meant that all of a sudden, we had slightly over-sold the show. Plus I realized that there were thirty-two musicians I had failed to include in the numbers. So the panic about under-attendance was replaced by a panic about over-attendance. In the event, like everything else about the festival, we just seemed blessed. A few people were unable to attend and the numbers turned out to be exactly right. Also, the finances worked out almost to the last penny. We never intended to make a profit, but the hope was to break even, which we did.

Other oddities included my quest for a burger van, which we felt was an integral part of a festival. I scoured the lay-bys of Hampshire before setting on a little van I found near Hursley. The owner rang me up the night before the festival attempting to cry off, but I assured him he would have plenty of customers and he relented. He did indeed seem to be doing a good trade, but I was so scared of him I never asked how he thought it had gone, and to this day I don’t know how he felt.

We thought it would make things easier if we provided the backline of amps, drums etc. It did indeed help the day to run smoothly, but it entailed two trips to Portsmouth to manouvre two incredibly heavy Fender Twins up a narrow cellar staircase and into into the boot of my car.

The final fear was that people wouldn’t turn up promptly and that the early acts would be playing to no one. But in the end, we bullied people so much that there was a hefty crowd all day and a rammed one in the evening. I am not going to talk about the individual acts because that would be invidious, but suffice to say that every single one of them was excellent and the audience appreciation was immense: They listened in silence and gave their full attention to every act. And I can’t omit the incredible birthday surprise when my daughter leapt on stage to blast out PJ Harvey’s “Black Hearted Love” with the House Band.

In a flash, it was over. It had all gone precisely to plan, which means that there will certainly be another one next year. We won’t try to get any bigger, because we wanted it to be “small but perfectly formed”, and it was.