After much consideration, we have decided to take a year off from Wood Festival this year (2012): “to everything there is a season”, as they say, and while we could possibly have run the event later in the summer, we feel it belongs in the Spring. We’d like to thank those who have expressed encouragement and enthusiasm, and it won’t be long before Wood is back. As soon as we have news on the next Wood Festival, you will be the first to know, and we’ll also keep you informed of other events we get involved with.

The first one is coming up at the end of next week: we’re celebrating the coming of Spring with an evening of music and revelry in the Barn at Braziers Park, home of Wood Festival, on Saturday 26th May. As well as music from Robin & Joe’s band The Dreaming Spires we welcome our friends  Trevor Moss & Hannah-Lou and Band of Hope for the “Wood Sessions”. No doubt the night will close with a customary Wood All-Stars jam. There will be a BBQ (meat & veggie) and a bar too. Parking space outside the house is limited so please share travel or take the bus if possible. This is a one-day event with no camping. Under-14s are free with an accompanying adult. Tickets are strictly limited and available here from Wegottickets, priced £5.

Much love & we hope to see some of you at the Wood Sessions.

We still have some of the super-rare merch in the Truck Store on Cowley Road, and there’s plenty more still to come this summer! For everyone who loved the ambience of the festival (and apart from somebody who thought there “wasn’t enough alcohol or drugs” that seems to be most of us), there’ll be the WOOD area at Truck Festival in July.

Keep checking below for links to reviews, photographs, and videos of the weekend, as we’ll be updating it pretty regularly over the next couple of weeks.

*reviews:

Flying with Hanna

A Greener Festival

The Daily Info

Andy Letcher (Telling The Bees)

The Oxford Times

More than the Music

eFestivals

A Greener Festival

Well, we’ve had quite the weekend, the sun’s shone (for the most part), Khaira Arby over-ran spectacularly last night, Willy Mason and his brother Sam were backed up by Robin and Joe Bennett to make a pair of pairs of brothers, and every band garnered rave reviews from all the people coming to the Merchandise tent to try and buy their CDs.

It was all rather lovely, and today’s looking that way too. Eliza Carthy will be headlining in the evening, and there’s a full programme of workshops about to begin, the G&D’s ice-cream has arrived, and the t-shirts are selling hot cakes! Do you want a ticket for it? Well, we have a small number available on the door. Looking forward to seeing you, check out our facebook page here for a few photographs of the music and atmosphere from Friday, and more will be added steadily over the rest of the day and next week.

Fancy coming down to the festival? It’s not too late yet – there are a strictly limited number
of tickets on the door priced at THESE PRICES:

£80 – adult rest-of-the-weekend ticket
£60 – teen rest-of-the-weekend ticket

£45 – adult Saturday ticket
£35 – teen Saturday ticket

Ticket numbers are strictly limited as we have a fairly small capacity, but come on down!

(thanks to @wallingfordblok for the featured image)

Tickets

We are very nearly full up but there are limited Day and Weekend tickets available on the door. Check our Twitter feed at the top of the page (@woodfestival) for the latest ticket availability and pictures from the event.

Weekend tickets

Saturday/Sunday – £80 for Adults
£60 for Teens (13-17)

Saturday only tickets

£45 for Adults
£35 for Teens (13-17)

Sunday only tickets

£45 for Adults
£35 for Teens (13-17)

Getting to Wood

As mentioned elsewhere, you can park at Wood but will cost £10. There is a £5 discount for anyone with a full car (four or more people) and people travelling by  motorcycle, and a £5 fine if there’s only one person in the car. If you need someone to fill a seat, why not use GoCarShare?

We recommend that you cycle to Wood, leaving from the (old) Oxford Cycle Workshop on Magdalen Road at 2pm.

If you can’t cycle but still want to travel in an environmentally friendly manner, the X39/X40 bus, run by Thames Travel, runs between Oxford and Reading up to 4 times an hour. The nearest bus-stop is Braziers Park Turn.

Travelling by train? There is a train-station at Goring/Streatley, or you can take the train to Reading and catch the X39/X40 from there.

What Should I bring?

DO BRING:

Camping paraphernalia to personal taste.
Lots of good vibes.
Plenty of warm clothes to wear at night.
Yourself!

DON’T BRING:

Pets, except for assistance dogs.
Open fires. This includes barbecues, except in the designated barbecue area. There will be a campfire manned at all times by specialist fire stewards.
Glass bottles of any kind.

Founder of Oxford’s Catweazle Club, Matt Sage has since founded sister clubs to the Oxford acoustic club in London, Brighton and New York City, while the Oxford branch remains a vibrant and creative community hub, attracting not only countless local heroes but also diverse universal talents from Foals’ front to man Yannis to 75 year old beat poet Michael Horowitz and thousands in between. Matt comes to play the lunchtime slot in the Tree tent.

Then in the early evening, Police Dog Hogan bring their brand of anglicised Bluegrass to our fair festival, having already wowed crowds at Maverick festival and beyond. A group of musicians that have been playing music together for the best part of three decades, they bring all that experience to bear in their music, with close harmonies, fiddles, sideways-bass, and as much dancing as you could want!

Witney’s own Kora master Jali Fily Cissokho is up next. Born into the famous Cissokho family of hereditary ‘Griots’ (musical families who pass their skills from generation to generation), Fily was taught to play the kora (a 21 string African harp) at the age of 6 by his father Jali Kemo Cissokho and later by his older brother Solo Cissokho. His mother, singer Bintou Konte Cissokho, gave him the historical stories and songs and soon he was performing at local ceremonies in the region. At the age of 13 he formed his own group, Coute Diomboulo (who played at our Harvest Festival in 2008), and later performed as a solo artist throughout southern Senegal.

Since he was first invited to Europe in 2002 to tour with the family group, Jalikunda – winner of the BBC3 World Music Award, 2004. His UK appearances have included the WOMAD, Glastonbury and (our own) Truck Festivals, the Oxford Water Festival (“His music moved people to tears”) and Modern Art Oxford. He has also performed on David Attenborough’s BBC TV Documentary ‘Elephants’ for composer Will Gregory (of ‘Goldfrapp’ fame), and more recently for A R Rahman, composer of the score for ‘Slumdog Millionaire’.

Trevor Moss & Hannah-Lou are a married couple singing in close harmony, erstwhile members of Danny & The Champions of the World, and one of our favourite bands. Since their tour of village halls last year, their star has been steadily in the ascendant.With a new album coming out through Heavenly Records this June, ‘Quality, Last & Forever’  is already being hailed as a quiet masterpiece. Anyone who’s seen them live (in particular their stunning set at the Old Bookbinders this February) will know to expect bright interwoven harmonies and heartbreaking melodies.

The Epstein, a band constantly evolving over the past few years – from the original ‘Epstein-Barr Virus Band’ who played at Truck 2003 through to their latest 3-piece line-up, with guests like Stornoway‘s Ollie Steadman or Joe Bennett on bass – have changed through the years, but have always been captivating live. The kind of band so capable of whipping  up a storm that we could only ask them to close the night out at WOOD.

We’re chuffed to bits to have awesome New York singer-songwriter and WOOD Festival headliner Willy Mason coming down to play a few songs in-store! With his 2004 debut Where The Human’s Eat and follow up If The Ocean Gets Rough Mason showed a maturity of song-writing and depth of voice to captivate audiences wherever he rambles!

Willy is joined by some of the other acts from the WOOD line-up including Sarabeth Tucek who’s new album Get Well Soon has picked up rave reviews in recent weeks, and Catweazle Club favourites Telling The Bees.

Joining this illustrious company of talented souls we have The Dreaming Spires, one of Bolivia’s finest Thrash- Techno outfits! Not really, they’re actually the new band from WOOD and TRUCK organisers Robin & Joe Bennett.

Also on the bill are charming Oxford roots outfit Band Of Hope! Add to this the organic Cotswold lager that helped Record Store Day go with a bang and you have the makings for a lovely Saturday afternoon on Cowley Road!

The event is due to start around 2 PM and carry on ’til 10ish and is all completely free! [update: check these stage-times!]

4.30 – Telling the Bees

5.30 – Band of Hope

6.30 – Dreaming Spires

7.30 – Sarabeth Tucek

8.30 – Willy Mason

Following on from that, Green Lines come the wilds of west Pembrokeshire and beyond, with Tim Williams (The Crook Family) and Ruth Nic an Eanaigh forming the centre of a group who’ve garnered comparisons with the British folk-rock movement of the ’60s as well as the tight-knit harmonies of early-period REM. Then Nick Holton brings Holton’s Opulent Oog to the stage, and anybody who’s been to the past few Woods will be familiar with the understated, smoky brilliance of his tranquilized alt-country. He doesn’t do a lot of gigs, but when he does, they’re special occasions.

Signed to the brilliant Canadian label Arts & Crafts (Feist, Broken Social Scene, Stars, and countless others), Zeus started out as the latest permutation of BSS cohort Jason Collett, but Rob Drake, Carlin Nicholson, Mike O’Brien, and Neil Quin had been playing in bands for a little while before Zeus came together towards the end of 2008. Musically, they have a sound more akin to the broad, poppy psychedelia of mid-90s Elephant Six bands like Apples In Stereo than anything else, swapping instruments to suit the song, and their fuzzy rock will be joining us on this sage before The Eliza Carthy Band headline on Sunday night.

Breaking the run of Joe Bennett-related artists is American singer-songwriter Sarabeth Tucek. Her sound pitches up somewhere between the modern type of folk-singer typified by Feist or Cat Power and power-pop of years gone by like Big Star or Neil Young, and her latest album ‘Get Well Soon‘ has received glowing praise from all quarters since it’s release.

Creeping into the evening, Uiscedwr bring their multiple award-winning selves into the festival. Based around the multi-instrumentalist Cormac Byrne and fiddler Anna Esslement, since they formed at the Royal Northern College of Music in 2001, they’ve won the British Young Folk Award (although everybody knows they stole it from Katy Bennett, obviously), played to thousands at festivals around the country, and garnered a reputation as one of the best young folk acts around.

A cousin of Malian legend Ali Farka Toure (whose son Vieux played at Truck 2009), Khaïra Arby was struck by music from a young age, entering and winning singing competitions in Timbuktu without her strict parents finding out. Since then, she’s become one of the biggest musical exports from Mali, being dubbed the ‘Nightingale of the North’. She’s won the Tamani d’Or (the African equivalent of winning best Artist and Lifetime Achievement awards at the Brits).

We’ve a long history with the Magic Numbers, with the band playing one of their first ever festival shows at Truck 2005. Since then, they’ve gone on to become one of the most critically-lauded bands of the past decade, and have cropped up in some funny places: Romeo doing an impromptu set at Truck 2008; our Harvest festival in the same year; in the Guerilla store that led to the opening of Truck Store!

Thus, it makes total sense to welcome Michele onto the stage for Wood as she warms up to the release of her debut solo album. After that, we’ll switch things to Doors-addled desert-western soundtrack ensemble Spindrift, who used to be in the LA cult heroes the Brian Jonestown Massacre before choosing twangy Morricone guitars as the future. After that, we  have the whirlwind rush of the American-cajun-folk-by-way-of-Switzerland trio Mama Rosin to warm everyone up nicely for Thea Gilmore!

Michele Stodart: 17:00 – 17:30
Spindrift: 18:30 – 19:10
Mama Rosin: 20:30 – 21:15