Live Review: Maverick Festival, Easton Farm Park, Suffolk 5th-7th July, 2024

Here’s the first of two reports from last month’s Maverick Festival. It’s one of AUK’s favourite weekends and we were fortunate enough to have two of our reviewers attend this year.

It’s more than likely the first acts performing on Friday evening at the Maverick Festival are going to be relatively unknown, so who to choose? I didn’t get there in time for the first performances (sorry Box River Junction and Chris Murphy), so I plumped for Drew Young, playing solo at the Moonshine bar.  A couple of songs in, he riffed with some of the audience who had been to his hometown of New Orleans, about the virtues of a local cocktail called a Hurricane although I think it’s some time since he tasted one – evident in many of the songs in his recent album “Bourbon and Bad Decisions”. Having enjoyed his laid-back, country-rock crooning, I strolled over to the Peacock Stage in a converted barn, to catch Catherine MacLellan, one of the number of performers at Maverick who come from remote parts of Canada (Prince Edward Island in her case). This was more laid-back music from another singer-with-guitar, but this time with an alt-folk edge and a bit of a gospel swing. She included a great rendition of ‘Songbird’, written by her father Gene MacLellan.

After a snack, lubricated with a pint of one of the many fine local beers (at £6, relatively cheap for a festival), I was ready for something that was a bit livelier, so I headed for my favourite stage – The Barn. The Often Herd fitted the bill nicely with their energetic mix of bluegrass and English traditional folk influences. Their North-East England roots were evident in the title of a great instrumental – ‘Sycamore Gap’, with superb interplay between fiddle, mandolin and guitar underscored by nimble double-bass.

A little later I caught the end of The Pleasures’ set in The Barn. One of several performances at Maverick that featured Lachlan Bryan (more about him below). Great country harmonies between Lachlan and fellow Australian Catherine Blett.

I was now nicely positioned at the front of The Barn for a scorching blues set from Tom Attah of Guildford – he boasts of this with ironic pride. I can’t beat the description in the programme blurb which says “He combines the raw power of Son House with the dense hypnotic rhythms of Howlin’ Wolf.” One man, a guitar and loads of pedals, getting a great performance on blues classics like ‘I got my mojo working’ – and also some very funny comic asides.

I finished off the night at the tiny Moonshine which was hosting the legendary Lachlan Bryan’s Drunken Piano. Bryan is a regular fixture at the festival, appearing with his own band and as a member of others. This event features various combinations of artists who are performing at the festival. It’s very loosely co-ordinated by Bryan and is almost a jam. All the players are having a good time, and this produces some impressive playing and singing.

You can be pretty sure that the first slot on the Saturday morning goes to an artist who is new on the scene. Dom Glynn & his Sunday Best are just such a band who have been going less than a year and have only two songs available for streaming. Their vintage honkytonk sound, partly inspired by Hank Williams but more up-tempo, had the modest-sized audience in The Barn foot tapping, jigging around and some were even dancing. ‘Singing to Survive’, one of their two recorded songs, compares the singer’s life with that of his friends who are “getting rich working nine to five, and I’m the fool who is singing to survive,” sometimes “he thinks he is crazy with his dreams” but he “just wants to be a cowboy, riding on the western plains”. More songs from their repertoire are about to be recorded including the obligatory song about the ups and downs of excessive drinking ’Tonight I think I’ll do it all again’, and an account of an infatuation with a film star sung from a woman’s  perspective with the chorus of “I wish I was the girl who kissed James Dean”. Great songs and fantastic instrumental duelling between virtuoso finger-picking guitar and fiddle. Of course most people missed them because they were having breakfast or were still asleep, but one of the good things about Maverick is that many of the less well-known artists get to play twice. When they played again on Sunday morning, word had got around and the Peacock Stage was packed.

The morning performances on the open-air stage, The Green, had to be relocated to the Peacock Stage because of rain. But this was no bad thing for The Fargo Railroad Company from Sheffield, who warmed our dampened spirits with their excellent modern-sounding country music with southern rock influences. They managed three audience-participation songs no less, including a version of ‘Drinking Alone’ which was adapted so the crowd could bellow the line “you’re an arsehole” (you had to be there!).

Next was Seven Dark Lords, an East Midlands country band who sang great sad songs about lost love, dysfunctional families and the demon drink, including ‘More Love From This Bottle’ with its classic country imagery – “I get more hate from this whisky but at least this whisky’s true, I get more love from this bottle than I ever got from you”. Three of their five members (yes, five) play guitar which resulted in some great interplay between rhythm and lead guitar.

Then it was over to the Moonshine to see Savannah Gardner. She is from California but has been developing her craft over the last three years in London. She has a rich silky voice, but with a lightness and swing in the style of Willie Nelson. Quite of few of the songs she performed were clearly inspired by her own experiences, several of them yet to be recorded, such as ‘Deep Blue Sea’ about her teenage experiments with magic mushrooms.

By mid-afternoon the rain eased off enough for the outdoor stage to be up and running, and the camping chairs were out in force on the grass for Forty Elephant Gang from East London. The band mostly perform as a trio of two guitars and mandolin, but today they were nicely supplemented by bass and drums. They have been around for at least 10 years and have evolved a style that has elements of bluegrass and blues fused with the gritty pop sensibility of Squeeze, ‘Miss You’ being a good example. There are also some gorgeous harmonies, such as on ‘Hard Times’.

Every year Maverick pays tribute to a musical legend. This year it was billed as a Robbie Robertson Tribute. Various combinations of artists performed songs by the Band and from Robertson’s solo career and there were satisfying performances of many of the iconic songs. Earlier on Massy Ferguson had noted that Peter Bruntnell would be joining them on The Band tribute. They performed a decent version of ‘I Shall be Released’, but disappointingly Bruntnell only did backing vocals.

My final show of the day was the rousing cajun and zydeco music of The Po’Boys. This UK based band is very authentic-sounding to my ears and many of the songs were sung in Louisiana French such as ‘Je m’en fous pas mal’. They also did a great version of the Phil Collins song ‘In the Air Tonight’. There was lots of serious moshing. A great way to end the day.

The highlight of Sunday morning was a second helping of Dom Glynn & his Sunday Best (see above). I also saw two duos both of whom had a male guitarist and a female double-bass player. Wild Ponies are a Nashville based duo mainly playing songs in an old-time Appalachian style such ‘Mama Bird’. Over the Moon are from Alberta in Canada playing a mixture of western swing, such as their eponymous song ‘Over the Moon’  and country ballads inspired by rural life and local history such as ‘John Ware’ – about a famous black cowboy. They told some great stories, many of them hilarious. A lot of the Maverick performers were very proficient at engaging the audience between the songs with chat, but Over the Moon are masters of this art.

I did see some other performances, most notably Diana Jones and Jerry Joseph, but my fellow AUK reviewer, Andrew Frolish is covering these. There were several artists that I would like to have seen, but England vs Switzerland got in the way.

I was last at Maverick in 2021 and it was great to see that it hadn’t changed. A great mixture of UK and North American performers, plus the regular Australian contingent. Some who are just starting out and others who are well-established. It is too small to bring in any big names like at Black Deer and that’s part of its attraction for me. It results in the boundary between artist and audience being a thin one. You can experience performances close up and you can chat to many of the artists in the merch area and in the queues at the food outlets. Long may it continue.