Truck Festival spin-off

Details of a new sister event revealed

04 Mar 2008 - Truck Festival organisers have announced details of a new three day event. The environmentally themed Wood Festival gets underway on 16 May and will precede Truck, which run from 19 to 20 July.

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly will headline The Wood Festival which will take place at Brazier’s Park in Oxfordshire. Other headline acts include Ashley Hutchings’ Rainbow Catchers (with special guest Judy Dunlop), King Creosote and Danny and the Champions of the World.

Organiser Robin Bennett told 6 Music they planned to keep the new festival small but effective:

“We have just 800 tickets. That event’s gonna be very acoustic and environmentally themed. Now whether Get Cape…will appear at Truck, I can only speculate!” 

Robin explained why they decided to organise another one:

"Doing a new, fresh, event is a way of reminding ourselves why we do what we do."
Robin Bennett, organiser of the Truck & Wood Festivals

“We started Truck Festival ten years ago when we were all teenagers and now, obviously, our lives have changed quite a lot.

“Truck Festival’s the same as it always has been which is great, but we also wanted to try out some new ideas and obviously the big ones for us are the environment and what we can do to reduce our impact.”

2007 Wash-Out

Robin admitted that the experience of the 2007 summer storms, which forced them to reschedule Truck was a hard one: “The level of flooding that we had was once in a lifetime. I’m not saying that it won’t happen again because of course with the way climate change seems to be affecting our weather we can’t really say that for sure. The impact was quite devastating and all we can do is trust that, that at least wont happen again for a while. There’s nothing you can do to defend against it.”

He admitted that the creation of the Wood Festival was inspired in part by last year’s experience:

“Obviously the environmental theme ties in with that, but also everyone in the village where we hold Truck is still looking forward to the summer and are a bit traumatised by the whole experience.

“Doing a new, fresh, event is a way of reminding ourselves why we do what we do. Doing two events for the budget of one really pushed everyone to their limits, emotionally and physically. I think just doing something new on a small scale where its really controllable is also very appealing to us. Getting something happening in the Spring and…then when we come to Truck we’ll all be ready to really celebrate.”

Although headline acts for the Truck Festival are yet to be announced, Robin confirmed that Maps, Ian Maclagan from The Small Faces, These New Puritans, Noah & The Whale and Emmy the Great are among the acts who will be heading to Hill Farm in South Oxfordshire in July.


Jacqueline Springer