The nation’s favourite family friendly festival, Deer Shed Festival, returns for 2017 in its eighth incarnation with a host of exceptional headliners and special guests.
Continuing a commitment to providing their audiences year on year with a range of diverse artists – and thus ensuring the tastes of every member of your family are fully catered for – the team at Deer Shed are delighted to present everything from a contemporary spoken word sensation, to a modern twist on West-African funk and disco, via some of the UK’s most treasured mainstays of the indie-rock movement.
On the back of Deer Shed Festival 7’s ‘At the Movies’ themed arena being crowned the most ‘Unique festival arena’ at the AIF’s 2016 Festival Congress Awards, this year’s event appears set to once again wow its happy campers with a star-studded line-up and the annual extra offerings of PG-rated comedy, authors, science, theatre and a carefully curated selection of renowned workshops.
This Year’s Headliners
Once dubbed by Kurt Cobain as “the best band in the world” and by Liam Gallagher as “the second best band in the world” – second, of course, only to Oasis in Liam’s head – TEENAGE FANCLUB clearly come recommended by some of their finest peers in rock ‘n’ roll. Autumn 2016 witnessed TFC (aka Fanclub and the Fannies) release their tenth album, their first for six years, named Here. This new record from the gang of Glaswegians ‘brims with a staunchly good-hearted, quietly emotional desire to communicate something true’, according to Uncut, somewhat embracing the melancholy that has always appeared to linger on the periphery of the three songwriters’ collective works. It deals with the all too familiar feeling of yearning for escapism away from the pressures and anxieties of life; anxieties that the Deer Shed team hope to allay for festival goers within the retreat of the paradisiacal North Yorkshire countryside. TFC will be the first of the festival’s headliners, gracing the Deer Shed mainstage on the Friday night, and there are whispers they could be closing their set with their very first single from 1990, Everything Flows.
With 2016 bearing witness to the lines between poetry and music being blurred, as Bob Dylan claimed the Nobel Prize for literature, the Deer Shed team were determined to secure an act who similarly brings the boundaries of art crashing down around her. Alongside the critical acclaim she gained for her 2014 album release, Everybody Down – nominated for the 2014 Mercury Prize on top of winning the Soundcheck Award for the year’s best album – KATE TEMPEST has also won the hearts of literary audiences, after receiving the Ted Hughes Award and being selected as one of the 2014 Next Generation Poets by the Poetry Society. In these politically charged, post-truth times, her work offers a stark, honest commentary on modern human thought and behaviour; both in the cultural mainstream and its underbelly. Kate Tempest will be headlining Deer Shed Festival’s mainstage on the Saturday night with her truly unique blend of spoken word and rap narratives, performed against a backdrop of throbbing beats.
Our final headliner, billed on the weekend’s Sunday evening, is nothing short of a national treasure. Neil Hannon has been the only constant throughout the long history of the band THE DIVINE COMEDY, and is clearly the genius that has allowed the project to flourish across each of its eleven studio albums. The latest record from this impressive discography is named Foreverland, released on 2nd September 2016, “is a masterfully-arranged, part-chamber-part-pop record underpinned by Hannon's natural playfulness”. Hannon will be joined by his orchestral cohort to serenade an adoring audience on the Sunday evening, providing the cherry on top of what promises to be an almighty weekend of headliner sets.
Special Guests
IBIBIO SOUND MACHINE are among the artists providing support to Deer Shed Festival’s mainstage headliners. ‘Ibibio’ is the native language of the Ibibio people of southern Nigeria, and the act consistently pay homage to their African roots by fusing the best of the continent’s musical offerings with modern western post-punk and electro. The band, fronted by London-born Nigerian singer Eno Williams, create a sound described by NME as “Grace Jones and James Murphy […] playing Ghanaian highlife for their lives” and we are thrilled to have them on the bill for 2017.
For music lovers devastated by the disbandment of Pete and the Pirates in 2012, three of the band’s members provided some consolation when they decided to form TELEMAN, whilst adding drummer Hiro Amamiya to the roster. When watching this band’s unique blend of sound, mixing the indie pop once performed by Peter and the Pirates with motorik beats popularised in Germany, Deer Shedders are likely to discover a wholly unique genre that is sure to get the whole family dancing.
On October 21st 2016, HOOTON TENNIS CLUB released their second album, Big Box of Chocolates. Hailing from the Wirral in Merseyside, the band have penned a record “that retains all the colour and invention of their debut […]” while introducing profound themes of “love and loss, nihilism, and the ‘non spaces’ of Northern England”, according to their label, Heavenly Recordings.
We pride ourselves on our independent festival status. We understand that independence certainly doesn’t mean lower quality, and so do our festival goers. JOHN SMITH, a folk guitarist and singer from Devon, remains unsigned, but has released four fantastic self-funded albums to date. Ben Howard has labelled him “a magician” and we cannot wait for him to work this magic on our stage.
All the way from New Jersey, BC CAMPLIGHT (aka Brian Christinzi) will be joining our list of special guests, performing his stylistically diverse music which ranges from dramatic, layered pop to a haunted take on Sixties sunshine-pop, and psychedelic showstoppers.
LAUCAN is the last name on Deer Shed Festival’s first music line-up announcement. The band have just signed with Sunday Best Recordings, who will be releasing their debut EP in January 2017.
For co-founder Oliver Jones, the excited response that has surrounded the announcement of Deer Shed Festival 8’s first musical acts has provided some sweet relief, and he is keen to ensure the anticipation among potential Deer Shedders only heightens:
“Every year we worry ourselves sick about whether we will get anywhere close to the quality of line-up from the previous year’s festival. Well, we have got off to a fantastic start for Deer Shed Festival 8 with our main stage headliners and we’ve now moved onto worrying about the rest of the music bill!”
Published on 12 December 2016 by Ben Robinson
