​Transcript (edited for ease of reading)

 

I'm Ginny Koppenhol. I'm a portrait photographer and DJ from the Morecambe and Lancaster area and at the moment I'm doing an interview and portrait series, talking to people involved in the electronic music scene in this local area. I'm really keen to know what is working, what’s a challenge, and what are the opportunities.

This is 40 years since dance music exploded in the UK and it seems like a really good time to just see where we're at really and to understand how to help smaller scenes to survive and thrive in this current climate.

I spoke to Rich Dyer, who is co-founder of Skiddle and also an events organiser. The conversation lasted 2 hours nearly so we've split it into two parts.

Part one is already up on my website and Rich talks about some of the early experiences he had in the event promotion world, what drew him to want to put on parties and later much bigger events. The conversation took us through some of those earlier experiences up to the early imaginings of Highest Point in Lancaster, a festival that has been taking place at Williamson Park, right up at the top of the city. It's not a park that is commonly used for that type of event so Rich and his team had a vision and it came with lots of challenges.

In part two, we talked much more about that. What were some of those behind-the-scenes experiences and how did he and the team navigate those things to put on what was a fantastic festival?

So I hope you enjoy the second part of our conversation.

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We then had a year off because we lost Chris (Glaba) in the December. So we'd gone from Chris being a rebel to being slightly ill, to being terminally ill, to losing him in less than 12 months. We needed to regroup and it did impact me really badly, that's not a secret.

But out the back of that, we then had Highest Point.

We're like, “look, actually it did work. Doing just one stage and doing whatever, it did work. So let's stretch ourselves thin, put lots of tents up and that was the birth of Highest Point. And you know, it grew.

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That moment we were talking about before, standing on the stage at Wickerman (Festival)… we were very lucky to stand at the top of the (Ashton) Memorial and look down. There were so many moments in that place where you're like, “Oh my God!”

We did the first year and we struggled for mainstage talent. We got enough, we had Ocean Colour Scene, we had Embrace. We didn't struggle for customers, but people are saying, “oh, it's too expensive”. And you're like, “it's 60 quid and on your doorstep”.

 

These are touching on some of the opportunities and challenges of a city this size...

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We had a good electronic music lineup. My mate Ryan (Stanger), he's been around all these years, I'd always said to him, “one day you'll warm up for Sasha”. As it turned out, we got Sasha! We managed to book him for the first Highest Point Festival. Rob (Casson) sorted that out for us. It was all quite last minute. We used to do bands up at the memorial, but on that Friday we said “we’ll do this DJ line up and then make it band-friendly for the Saturday”. I can't remember who else we had on the Friday, but essentially, I promised Ryan that one day he'll warm up for Sasha. The way that a lot of DJ deals happen, is that you might be able to do it a bit cheaper because Sasha was on his way to Newcastle. It was a natural stopover. He's getting two shows in one night, so we didn't pay much less. Then he was like, “I need to be able to play between 5 and 7”. I was like, “cool, I'll put you on afterwards Ryan, then Sasha's warmed up for you, hasn't he?”

You know what, if you stand up at that memorial on the right day and you look out as the sun's setting and you see Morecambe Bay, you can see right across to Barrow and Grange. The sun was setting and Sasha was playing ‘Xpander’ and it’s again just one of moments where you're like, “okay, we've done this”. We didn't bring in the weather, we didn't tell Sasha what to play, and we didn't tell the sun to set. But those things all happened at that particular moment. It was very overwhelming because I had a lot going on at home at the time and I was just like, “okay, this is madness”.

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We created a lot of that with the park, but we lost a lot of money. I've always been pretty vocal about this on socials. You can put 10,000 people in that park. You could go bigger, but we were licensed to 10,000 people a day right? You then have to provide the infrastructure for those 10,000 people. You then have to have the artists that 10,000 people want to come and see. Now, to get those artists, you're adding zeros again. Our average headliner bill was around anywhere between £1000 and £150,000 for one artist, okay? So we spent probably around £600,000 on artists. Each of those artists then comes with a particular set of requests. We used to have to build an artist village because everyone who knows the park, there's no flat ground really. So our artists would appear on the main stage, and I'm not going to tell people a journey of how they got there, but we'd end up with an artist village off-site. We had four different artist villages over the years because again, we thought we'd found the perfect location and then all of a sudden a tour bus gets stuck going up a hill. So we’d need to find somewhere else for next year.  

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We had some great solutions and a lot of people. I thank a lot of people for what we did, but It's expensive. Then on top of that, people would bring their kids and then leave them there and then go home. One year we had 100 and something kids come through welfare. I know some people comment about this and it's a really difficult thing. You've got kids wandering around. It's like, well, okay, we can try and keep them with the parents, but that's the parent decision. We've got kids drinking alcohol but we're not serving them the alcohol, 100% not. We did ‘Challenge 25’ on the bars. We've always done that. But if somebody buys alcohol and then gives it to a kid, that's on the parent, right? But it's not, it's on us as the event organiser to then go away and have to employ a welfare team. Now to bring a welfare team in I'd have people wandering around, a) looking out for people and b) challenging kids who might have had a drink. But we never had trouble at that festival. There was a couple of scraps in like 7 years. And I know some people are intimidated by the North Face crew, but my son's a member of the North Face crew, right? Thirteen-year-old boys love dark clothes, right? And they love hanging out, chatting. That's not intimidating. But people used to say, “oh, there's loads of kids there”. And I'm like, “Yeah, I'm not going to make it 18 plus, because when you make it 18 plus, it takes away everything that I've wanted to do”.

 

But you get bigger, so you've got to find another £10,000 to do all that welfare work. We needed a bigger fence. You've got that park over there where people are trying to break in. They're coming through that estate, and they're trying to break into the festival. You've got people like, “you need to close the road”. We worked it out that we spent £100,000 protecting an empty park, before you put an artist in, before you put a stage in or whatever. 

The annual bill for highest point is about £1.2 million, right? This isn't me playing a little tiny violin, this is the way events have gone. The government brought in a situation where they said generators aren't allowed to use red diesel anymore for the environment. You either use synthetic fuel or you pay full price and we'll do the eco stuff off that. So you end up paying £1.30 more on a litre of fuel overnight, and you're using 7,500 litres of fuel over the weekend! I get it, we've got to look after the environment, but it's a cost and it's not really looking after the environment, it's shifting something around.

Out of a ticket, 25% goes in taxes because you pay VAT, you pay your PRS. People weren't that mad keen on spending much more on a ticket, but then they wanted to see artists.

 

We often got compared to like Lytham Festival and Kendal Calling, and they're both owned by Superstruct at the moment who have endless numbers of festivals. They'll buy an artist, and they'll place the artist at loads of them. Lytham Festival’s, Live Nations, and Cuffe and Taylor. So it's like, they've got Stevie Wonder and that's massive, but you're in a rectangular flat bit of field that’s really easy to fence off. There's 30,000 of you in there and you're paying 30 quid for a bottle of wine. Yes, you get to see Stevie Wonder, but if you want to see Stevie Wonder in Lancaster, I'm not capable of booking him because I'm not part of the group. All the biggest love to Lytham. Peter and Dan, I respect what they do, but they're part of the touring circuit now. When Alanis Morissette comes out on stage, she's not chosen to come to Lvtham, it's part of a package that they've done. So we were left in a situation where you're competing for artists. There's a lot of exclusivity in this game. So it's like, if you're playing in a certain place, then you can't play within 100 miles. That happens a lot, and it happens in nightclubs, it's everywhere. You're left with a pool of artists and you can't get your ticket price to a point that it needs to be at. I know loads of people think we made loads of money there. Highest point over the years didn't make a penny, and probably cost me about 2 million. It's not sustainable. Now, does it mean we're not going to do something in the park? No. But what it means is that we've got to rethink it. We built a control room with 56 CCTV cameras in it. We've got fibre ops at links throughout the park. You can't sustain that for what it needs to be. There's ideas that we're developing, but we need to rethink the whole model.

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In the meantime, we've been doing stuff at the Town Hall. We’re regrouping, and we had a year off. I missed it like crazy.

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It's had a huge impact on Lancaster. It's been amazing. Personally, obviously being from this area, it's been such a massive part of the fabric. It was like, “wow, this is possible!”. We all know the park and we all know the castle, like you said, but it's about someone coming along and having the vision for that space, which is not an easy terrain, literally, and imagining a festival there. Even whilst it’s happening, it's hard to see it as the same park because it's transformed for that weekend.

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It always made me laugh when we topped the sundial… Going back a bit… Hotels were a big problem for us, accommodation across the city. You bring in 150 crew and you’ve got to put them somewhere. Then people put the prices up because they're busy. Then what you end up with is anyone that might want to visit Lancaster (because we weren't a camping festival), you’re not bringing in the outsiders. We were quite a local festival really because there was no rooms left and there was a point where we had the Ibis one year and then that went to the Immigration Service. You've taken a lot of budget rooms out of the city that didn't really have budget rooms. That was a challenge for us.

It always used to make me laugh that I'd come out and I'd turn around and you'd see the memorial and then this big top and you're like, “that park is really close to the city!” because it just loomed down on you from a certain place, but it seems an absolute mile away when you have to walk up a hill.

 

I went to the park the other day, and I always look at the sundial and think, “I DJ'd on that”, and it seems so small...

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Yeah, perspective is amazing. This something what you learn in events. I used to put the tents up at Wickerman Festival and go, “Oh, these are small”, and then you put something in the tent and you're like, “Oh, OK…”  Because there's nothing to scale, you see it smaller than it is. The sundial was always one of those. We put the big top up and I was like, “Where's the stage?” And someone was like “it's the stone there”. Then you put the DJ booth on it and the kit and it's like, “it's really big up here!” It's madness.

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Our biggest year bizarrely, was the COVID year. We moved to the festival four times. COVID was such a thing because we were desperate to deliver this event and nobody really knew what was going on. But very fortunately, all the artists we had booked, agreed to come with us. We were able to make that work. We were working with people that were working very close to the government, so we had an idea of when stuff was going to get lifted, and we finally settled on that September weekend. We then spoke to the park and they're like, “yes, absolutely fine, but there are six weddings booked in” and we're like, “oh my God”.

 

Obviously the council were very protective over the weddings, you know, it's somebody's big day! They couldn't give us the bride and grooms’ details and all these things. We were like, “Look, we have everything, we have this weekend.” Again, the people at the park and the council were excellent and they were very respectful to the brides and grooms, as much as they were to us. What they did agree to do was e-mail them all and then say, “would you agree to be contacted?” Luckily, all six came back to us. There was one bride and groom that, rightly so, said, “we just want to get married on the Friday”. And we went, “not a problem”. It was a service in the afternoon and I agreed to this, then I told everyone. I told them that “when you get married, we'll make sure there's absolutely nothing that looks like a festival like around you” (this is on the Friday and we were doing the Thursday night). “You'll be able to drive up from the bottom road, up the driveway and there'll be no fencing, there'll be no generators, there'll be nothing, it'll just be your special day. There'll be a stage the other side, but that doesn't matter. But this is your day, we're here for it”. Then I went to Sam and God bless Sam, he's been a constant in my life for a very long time. He helped deliver the festival. I know he pulls his hair out and he hasn't got much hair because of me. I just went, “We've got a wedding, 2pm on the Friday and the stage opens at 6pm”. He went, “So you've got 3 hours to build the stage?”. God love him, he went with it but he was not happy. But they had their beautiful day. All the security, all the staff applauded them out of the park. It was just fantastic. I gave the whole wedding party guest list for the Saturday and they were the loveliest. Then there was another couple that wanted to be married in the park and it was a big deal to them, but they didn't really have much of a budget anyway. So I just agreed to pay for everything for them if they would move the date. I think my wife Emma did the flowers for them. But then we had some really difficult ones. We did have one couple and they just went, “yeah, we'll move it for 20 grand”. And I'm like, “you're not getting married for love if you're saying that to me”. But we had to do it. There was no two ways about it.

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We were then going into September. I'd already had a holiday booked and it was the kids' summer holidays. It was the end of August, the festival's close. Jamie (Scahill) had said, “Don't worry, go away”. But I'm poolside, working. You're on a COVID holiday, which was weird anyway, because the Spanish situation was a bit different. It was the first outdoor event since COVID. It was the first event basically in the north of England. We had James booked on the Thursday and that was selling, selling, selling. It was the first time we'd done one stage, since the Hacienda event. We were dead nervous and did our calculations, and we didn't believe them. So we stopped that at 6,000 tickets and we could have sold 12,000. On the night, there was loads of space around people as well, so I was like, “I wish we’d sold more”. But again, we weren't willing to test that. We tested it by being under, rather than testing it by being over. Friday was Wilkinson and a big D&B lineup on the main stage, which was really cool. Saturday was Rag ‘n’ Bone Man, and Sunday was Rick Astley and Sophie Ellis Bexter. Becky Hill was on the Friday. With Becky Hill, we'd paid a 10th of what she was worth. When we booked her, she was worth what we paid but then over COVID, she got herself out there. She made herself really famous! Rag ‘n’ Bone man had done exactly the same. He was a B+ artist who was good, but he’d got himself onto socials and was doing these live sessions. Everyone had heard a Rag ’n’ Bone Man. Sophie Ellis Bexter invented the kitchen disco. We're like, this is all really cool!. Agents were like, “look, you need to be paying a bit more”. We're like, “no, we've contracted at this price”. So we just then sold out all four nights on our terms and we were like, “this is cool, we're fine”.

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But then we went into the next year and everyone went, “you need to line up that big”. And we're like, “they weren't that big when we booked them”. Do you know what I mean? And then what happens on social media is people are so chuffin’ happy to tell you that they don't like someone. And you're like, it's so degrading. Was it the Kaiser Chiefs the year afterwards? And they're amazing, man. But whoever we had on the Friday, people just lay into you and then other people join in and people like to tell you that the lineup is shit. Then other people join in because somebody else has said that and it's like, “when did you last listen to anything that person's done?” Or people say, “I've never heard of him”. It's like, “well, now's your opportunity!”.

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So last year, the last year that we did the festival (2024), on the Friday night we were supposed to have Tom Grennan, right? (a bit of an exclusive here). It was all contracted, done, signed for. Everyone's happy. We're ready to go out with the lineup. Then we get a phone call because his tour manager has realised that Tom Grennan is also getting married that weekend!

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Oh, wow. What a double booking.

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Yeah. And somebody just basically forgot to fill in his calendar. You're like, “okay, that's the kind of thing I do when I forget sports day”. And don't get me wrong, whatever I've double bought with sports day, gets cancelled. But we were left with nothing. We were just like, okay, lineup's supposed to be going out next week. So we had to scramble around and we ended up with Tom Odell, which is a different kind of booking. My God, did people want to tell us they didn't like him. The guy's won Brit Awards! Do you know what I mean? He would have been a booking I’d book anyway, but maybe a different part of the lineup, right? And we just got absolutely slated. And when it takes that amount of energy out of you by what people are saying about it, you just go and hide in the dance tent because that's where you're happy.

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That's, the electronic music crowd. They never fail you! Haha

 

Well, no, they don't. Let's talk electronic music. Some of the best moments of my life were on that stage at the memorial. We're in the big top. Mozey, what a guy. Let's talk about Dan (AKA D.O.D.), right? I've known Dan a long time, man. I am so proud of his journey. I have seen him graft like you would not believe. We booked him in a scout tent up at the Wickerman, that held 100 people. He's found, I don't want to say his lucky break because it's not lucky, it's real work. I'm honoured to know him now and you see him now and he played Highest Point for us and there was another one where we had to shut the big top early for some reason. I can't remember why, but Dan was up at the Memorial and I was just like, “mate, you just need to keep playing”. And and he's more prescriptive with where he wanted to take his set. He always plays his own tune last and he'd already done it. I was like, “mate, I need 15 more minutes” and he literally just picked up the microphone and went, “ who wants some more!?” and everyone cheers. It was to help get people out the park. I think we had a road sweeper down the bottom or something. It wasn't supposed to be there and we're looking out for people so we had to create an attraction because if not, everyone was going to leave and we were going to end up with an issue. So we basically stalled it by giving them more. It's a bit like when you leave Disneyland and then Mickey Mouse appears and he waves at you and everyone stops and takes photos…

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Dan was Mickey Mouse? haha

 

Yeah, Dan's my Mickey. You know, they do that with Mickey Mouse because the monorail station's too busy and they want to stem the flow of people.

You see him (D.O.D.) now. He's absolutely phenomenal. He's doing such a great thing. He's such a humble guy. I can't wait to catch up with him soon and I'm just proud from the inside. Again, we used to do a bit of work with Gareth Emery back in the day and he did his Vegas residency and he got Laser City and you just, you're watching from afar going, “I know the graft. I know what you did to get where you are”.

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I think especially coming back to our city and area, well I know he wasn't born here, but he started his journey here. You'll have to listen to Dan's interview, that's a plug for that… but he talks about as a student, putting on his own events in Lancaster. It just makes it all that more brilliant to see someone go as huge as he has from a place the size of Lancaster because it's

not always the most fertile ground for the electronic music scene, but he's helped to shape it and then taken it further.

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And I'll always remember Dan saying to me that he wanted to put a drum & bass night on and the authorities won't let him because it was deemed as “troublesome music”. We just came along and did it!

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Do you think you've always had it in you, to see something that doesn't look possible, but then just go for it? Is it a set of skills that you have to draw on or is it just your personality?

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I think it's arrogance.

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Okay, is that the right word do you think?

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Yeah, but not a bad arrogance. I don't go around thinking I'm better than you and I'm just going to do that. I'm not that guy, but I like to challenge the norm shall we say. But I respect it at the same time. At Highest Point, we had to integrate a lot with authorities and coming back to the COVID, we were getting questioned by environmental health. We were asked what our schedule was going to be for wiping down door handles. I'm like, “well, the schedule is we're not going to wipe down door handles because that's impossible on a portaloo”. It's up to the person. If they go to the toilet, if they come out and gel their hands like you would at any festival, then you've eliminated any problem. I said “that’s fine but my question to you is, how often do you wipe down the kids playground?” And that comes from respecting them but also, if someone says we can't do that, then you need to ask that person “why?”. You have to be confident in the fact that, well, if I'm going to challenge that, I'm actually going to present some reasons why I think you're incorrect and hopefully we can meet somewhere in the middle.

 

Going back to the Duchy (that we chatted about in part 1), he was terrified of our event. Then we laid out a set of guidelines and promises. Will Griffith from the council, I do have a lot of time for but he's had to tick me off before, don't get me wrong. But then I've gone back to him and said, “this is where we're at”. Even what you're doing today, you're doing it for yourself because you want to do it. It's a creative outlet for you. It's a fantastic project. But to have the confidence to ring someone like D.O.D. up and go, “Hey man, can I have an hour?” The worst somebody's going to say to you is “no”.

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So it's asking the questions first...

 

Well, over COVID, we weren't sure we were going to get the park. So I went and found four other sites in the area by driving round and meeting people and saying, “look, is there any chance?” They're like, “well, I don't know.” And I went, “well, I don't know either, but is there any chance?” That comes from experience, but the very first gigs I was putting on as a kid, I was like 13 / 14 years old doing these all-ages gigs in the Tithe Barn in Carlisle. We'd done some little bits before at another venue. We were funded by a thing called Generator, which came out of Newcastle. They were supporting youth groups to book bands and whatever. We used to use this venue called the Richmond. Now, the Richmond is now the Brickyard in Carlisle, and they used to let us put these gigs on. Everyone was out at 9pm and then they'd open for the adults, the grown-ups, the towels came off the beer taps. So we had this gig plugged and then the water leaked and the roof came down! We're like, “we've not got a venue anymore!” And somebody says, “well, where are you going to do it?” Even at that age, it was like, “ There's a barn next to the cathedral and I literally just had to go and knock on the Reverend's door and said, “I've got this event planned…”. He was a little bit nervous but he gave us a chance. He goes, “All right, well, what are your plans?” And we did it. We put him on the front page of the newspaper, ‘Rocking Reverend Saves Kids’ Gig’. It was great.

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I don't have a particular set of skills. You’ve got to have confidence, you've got to be able to ask questions and you’ve got to be able to look at something and go, “what if?” But putting Highest Point on involves a lot of people. There's a core team and then there's a lot more and then there's more under that. Some of those people I meet for 2/3 days and some of them I work on it 12 / 11 months. It takes people to organise me because sometimes, like with the weddings, I'm like, “that's happening, no problem, festivals on”. Then people are looking at me going, “you're going to need 20 people”. Then the answer's got to be, “Well, get 20 people in because we have to do it”.

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We've always said in the events world; you've got 12 hours and a credit card to fix something at a festival. If you've had a bad day, tomorrow still happens. That's what it comes down to. If people aren't moving around right, or your sound system's not working, or you've got a rubbish problem, or the family campsite's moaning because it's too loud, then you've got 12 hours to fix it because you go again. That's what it comes down to. At the Wickerman, I got called into the office at various times, “we need to address this”. If you turn around and go, “I can't or I won't”, then that's not going to get any of us anywhere. Fix it, then debrief, so make sure it never happens again.

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When it comes to your own personal career and your own personal successes, we're all sometimes scared of our own reflection because you think, “well, why am I doing this for?” or “ I can't do that”. The amount of creative people that I speak to, Lizzie L, Tom from the Lottery Winners, again another guy that's gone on such a journey and I'm really proud to have played a part in it, but I know that he doubts himself and he's just toured with Robbie Williams! He played to 50 people up at Highest Point and he's now just been on tour with Robbie Williams and that's cool. I'm really proud of him for it. But it doesn't mean that he's like not doubting himself, but then it doesn't mean that Robbie Williams isn't doubting himself still. You know what I mean? Whatever level you're at, whether you’re a DJ starting out or you want to put on a club night, then if you put on a club night and 50 people come, it's not a failure. It's the grounds to build on something. I've put on shows where people haven't come and they've cost a lot of money, and I've put on some really, really good shows that I’m really proud of. You’ve just got to keep going.

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Your passion's still there for it?

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Yeah, yeah I love it but you've got to be grown up about it. If I had the means, I would have carried on with Highest Point.

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Having the year off has been a great time to reflect and give us some ideas, you know. We've got the Town Hall events in a couple of weeks, we've sold out Gok Wan. It's going to be really interesting to see that place with 1000 people in it. I'm excited for that. I'm genuinely excited, you know. We make these bookings because we know they're a lot of fun. Next year, Skiddle is 25 years old, so I've rented the Blackpool Tower Ballroom to put on an event. It's going to involve dinner and some other stuff. I buzz off that. I'm very fortunate to be able to do it. But then I have been involved in creating my own fortune, and a lot of people have seen it when it's not worked. My wife, she's been a huge part of my success and seeing my failures, and keeping me afloat with that. You've got to have good friends around you. Your support network’s got to be massive in this game because if not, it can be a very lonely place.

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It feels like you manage the uncertainty fairly well and think “I'm not quite sure how this is going to happen or how it's going to look, but let's figure it out”. Would you say that's fair?

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Yeah, I think rose-tinted spectacles are amazing.

The festival had to develop in different shapes and forms, for example, the big top went because people saw it as like a dark, nasty place. There was never anything nasty going on but people's opinions were formed. I liked it because you could get out of the rain! But we were presented with that conversation by the local authority, and I don't just mean the council, I mean like everyone that's involved in it at an authoritative level. It came up and we were like, “okay, well, if that's the biggest problem you've got with what we're doing, then of course I'll take it away”. I thought, “I want a wall of lights all the way around that sundial. And I want it to be this and I want it to be that”. We kind of got there with it. It was cool, but it presented its own problems by taking away the big top because the great idea of having a round stage in the middle, now couldn't work. We had to have a tent, and you still have to have cover for the DJ equipment, and then all of a sudden the sundial's in the way. You don't want people stood on the sundial because people fall off things that they stand on, which is why we had to stop using The Dell. You can tell people a million times not to jump across the benches, but if a middle-aged lady wishes to walk across the benches drunk and then fall off, then that's my problem even though we've put signs up and we've told her not to. Then we had to shut down the entire stage. I was gutted. I loved that space. But you've just got to go away and find the solution. So the woods was born.

I keep talking about having a year off. We're in September now, and we're not going to be announcing anything soon. I don't think there's a Highest Point next year. There might be something. But the form that it was in and what it consisted of needed a higher ticket price for it to carry on. We can't ask people for that because, it needs to be 78 quid a day. I completely get that we're dealing with a local audience that might not necessarily have that, just like a lot of people that live around Lytham and Blackpool can't afford Lytham Festival tickets, but they have about 15 miles of accommodation in every direction.

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We struggled a bit with the travel because of the accommodation and because of the transport links around the area. You know, the last West Coast mainline leaves Lancaster at like 9 o'clock or something.

 

Why did you choose to go north instead of going to a city like Manchester that has more of an infrastructure?

 

A city like Manchester is well established and it has its own complications, problems and competition.

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I love Lancaster. I love the Town Hall. It is a beautiful building that I think we can do a lot with. I'd like to do some other stuff in other spaces around Lancaster. I've been toying with an idea for a couple of years for a space in my head that would work for a little something that I want to do. Again, it always amazes me the amount of people that live in Lancaster that just haven't gone up the hill (to the park). It's such a beautiful location that you don't find that in many places. I constantly remind people that it’s there and it's beautiful. It's also got a great big mini Taj Mahal in the middle of it, which you don't have in Manchester. Do you know what I mean? Like A-wing; I went into a dusty old prison and came out with an idea and a challenge.

 

Manchester's got some really great spaces, it's got some really great clubs, but it's got stuff like the Warehouse Project, which coming back to what I was saying before about exclusivities, they are pretty notorious. You've got to understand that all these things are commercial. I dread to think what a lineup bill for a place like Warehouse Project cost. They're running 3 rooms, 8 hours, an hour a DJ, 16, let's say they got 24 artists on that night, they got 15,000 tickets they need to sell because at Mayfield it's a big old space now, 40 / 50 quid a ticket, right? If they're booking Bicep, they don't want to see Bicep playing somewhere else because people do pick and choose where they're going. It's a commercial decision. That's fine, but then it also means that it can cause problems for independents. There's a lot of people that would still play the independent and not play somewhere like the warehouse projects and vice versa. But to go into a space like Manchester or Liverpool, where there's really fantastic promoters doing really fantastic things, you've got to have something a bit different, a different style of music or a really interesting venue, for example. When Rob (Casson) was with us, he was doing the bombed out church in Liverpool, but then they were doing stuff at the asylum, which is the old mental health institute. He did some cool stuff there but those places aren't everywhere, and I've got them in Lancaster in the form of a prison and the park.
 

Listen, I live just down the road and I love doing it. That's what it comes down to, isn't it? What we did with A-Wing and what people used to say to us is that we kick-started a micro scene again. Back to what I was saying right at the start, back in part one, you can create a culture. You put an event on and the people go back to the parties, then we used to try and put resident DJs on and the people would say, “my God, I didn't realise you DJ'd or you were this good” or whatever. Culture's mad in it. If somebody's cultural, then other culture can follow, if that makes sense. Lancaster is great for that in a lot of ways. It's very arty, there's a lot of photography and there's a lot of design and stuff like that. You've only got to look at stuff like Lancaster and all these pockets of things, and you can do the same with music. If you build it, they will come I guess. Again, back to Highest Point… we'd be coming back out the hotel at whatever time in the morning to get back up to the park, and you'd see people straggling and you're like, “you’ve been to an after party after the festival”. And you're just like, “Yeah, we did that.”

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Signs of a scene.

 

Yeah, and that was it. You're just like, “I'm going back to work and you need to go to bed!”

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Have you got a sense of the scene in this area at the moment?

 

I'm not going to pretend that I'm massively connected to the Lancaster scene. I don't think people resented us, but you know, we used to get compared to Lancaster Music Festival loads and I'm like, “ It's a different kettle, man”. Like, I get it. We're up on the hill. I love Lancaster Music Festival. It's great. You fill all the pubs, you put on loads of different smaller artists and people come out and they'll have a drink and they'll have a laugh and that's great. You know, we put on Rag ‘n’ Bone, man. I'm not comparing myself. I'm not saying one's better than the other, like they're completely different events. Then we used to get a bit of stick that we're taking people out of the city and if you want to see it that way, then fine.

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So where the scene is at the moment? To me, we're going to carry on doing what we do. We're hopefully going to put quite a lot on in the Town Hall. We want to do more stuff, and it would be great to reconnect with some of the people we work with along the way. I hope we can be part of whatever scene there is, but by just carrying on doing what we're doing. I am 42 now and I'm not at the parties anymore and I'm not going out on a regular basis. So potentially I'm a little bit disconnected from it, but also at the same time I'd hope I can be a big contributor to it in a roundabout way. We're not at that stage yet in Lancaster. We maybe were, but if I wanted to do something, but there was a competing event on, we'd probably try and reposition it or speak to them to make sure we weren't going to impact them. We love this city. I've always loved this city. I've got other interests in the city now and I do hope people think and realise it all always came from a good place. Even if we did make money at the festival, it was never about the money. It was about putting something on and creating. It's a lovely creative outlet for me. It's just a challenge at the same time. But I think there's something brewing.

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I know you've mentioned several already, but do you have a career highlight, connected with the electronic music scene in Lancaster?

 

There's so many, I mean it's just endless.

I'd used to be so happy in the park.

Coming back to Dan (D.O.D.), that last set he played for us all there was so busy, man. So many smiling faces. That last tune that wasn't his last tune. You're just like, this is so cool. And Mozey is such a dude, he's so cool. Charlie Tee, she used to put together the drum & bass line up for us and we were just like “this is so good, man.”

 

It's the stuff that takes you back to the why; the music and the connection, the people and the community. It feels like that's a massive part. The fact that you've asked me back a few times. Highest Point means so much and from meeting you at Wickerman and entering that competition, that's how we met and that you want to keep people involved.

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Yeah, of course you do.

I mean, let's talk about Kaitzy. She got in touch for a set and she was right at the start of her journey. I was like, “yeah, of course you can go on first”. And then there's a little man and he got some DJ kit. I really need to remember this story. Essentially, he was on his dad's shoulders on the sundial. Long story short, the DJ was absolutely made-up that he was supporting him. They communicated a little bit over social. He ended up then sending the kid a load of DJ kit just to say, “look, get stuck in”. Then we gave that kid, the opening set on the memorial stage the following year.

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There's been so many humbling moments. Back to Hacienda Classical… we always used to take my kids’ Primary school year 5 class up to the park. Everyone hated me for doing it because they were so busy getting ready for the event and I'm like, “I'm showing around this class”. We took them all up on stage and Graeme Park was there on the Thursday afternoon. They were doing the sound check and the primary school teacher absolutely loved Graeme Park. She remembers the old days, you know what I mean? She was like, “Oh my God, Graeme Park,” and all these kids are like, “Who was that old man?” He gave us a lovely chat and Tim, the conductor came across and got the trumpets out and they played the trumpets. To me, if I can inspire those kids to be part of something… and we always used to show them every bit. I've got ‘Big Derek’ me toilet man. Derek, what a guy. He could tell you some stories about turds! He used to love just telling these year 5 class, like, “I bring the water in, and I take the water away”, and these kids would be like, “ How do you get to drive one of them tankers?” He’s like, “it's not a job, you want mate”. But then we'd show them the sounddesk, and some of them just wanted to perform. But then other guys, they're 9 years old, they don't know what they want out of life, but they're just in awe. You'd lift up a flap and you say, “you see all the sound and all that light and it's getting carried down that fibre optic cables”. “How?” And you're like, “I've actually never really thought about that, mate.” It's incredible what we did up there and I'm proud of that. I'm not arrogant about it. I'm very thankful for everyone that ever came, did it and anyone that was a part of it.

 

The thing is that when you talk about those moments, they'll be 10, 20 other moments that people had there. Everybody has stories from Highest Point, and you'll never know them all. And it'll be thousands, hundreds of thousands of little moments.

There'll be people that met there and I don't know, they might end up married. I don't know. Come back to the impact that we've had on people's lives. We are part of people's culture, and I’m pretty chuffed with that.

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I think that's a good place to finish. There's so much more we could talk about. We've been chatting for two hours. Can you believe?

Thank you so much.

 

You're welcome.

I hope you pressed record…!