The Long Road festival is now a fixture in the calendar of fans of country and americana music with its welcoming family friendly atmosphere and its broad range of established and upcoming acts across six stages. The festival is set in the grounds of Leicestershire’s Stanford Hall, a Grade 1 listed stately home built in the late 17th century.
Technically, East of Reno opened the festival with their “Anglicana” (which sounded more like early Elton John than Eliza Carthy’s version), but the first big act of the first day of the 2024 The Long Road was Brooklyn’s Gangstagrass at the Interstate stage.
Playing early because they also had a late set at Shrewsbury Folk Festival that evening, the band pre-started their set with a soundcheck version of ‘I Go Hard’ with R-Son and Doolio yelling “Soundcheck” at intervals. With three of the regular band, the other being guitar player and vocalist, producer Rench, and two UK-based players on banjo and fiddle, the set proper kicked off with a rousing ‘Freedom’. The bluegrass /hip hop mix is also fused with a strong people-focused political message with several calls to activism. Exemplified with ‘Do Better’ and its “We all do better when we all do better” chorus.
After their take on ‘Man Of Constant Sorrow’, the band underlines the message with ‘Up High Do Or Die’ leading the crowd to raise their “fists to the sky”. One of the highlights of latest album “The Blackest Thing On The Menu” is ‘Obligatory `Braggadocio’ which follows and with its “I got big wheels on my big truck” is definitely at the right place.
The final part of the show sees Rench lead into ‘Born To Ride’ before a fearsome and celebratory combination of ‘Red Sky Morning’ and 2021 single ‘Ante Up’ close out the show leaving an elated crowd to give the band a fine send-off before their journey across the Midlands. Before the set, AUK had time for a brief chat with the band which you can read here.
The Bros Fresh are a trio playing soul-tinged rock from Austin who were supported by the Visit Austin promotion at the Long Road. The band have strong stage presence and even included a cover of Tears For Fears’ ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’. They pop up across the festival over the weekend.
American Aquarium were the last americana act on the Interstate stage on Friday night. The Durham (NC) based six piece came roaring out of the blocks with opener ‘Crier’ before running through a high energy set of songs that had the audience bouncing from the off.
As might be expected we got several tunes from this year’s “The Fear Of Standing Still” but the set encompassed songs from throughout the band’s career. Front man BJ Barham manages the dynamics pretty expertly switching between the faster and slower numbers and lyrics which swing from the declamatory to the almost painfully vulnerable.
‘Cherokee Purples’, ‘The Long Haul’ and ‘Before The Dogwood Blooms’ were the ones that resonated most with this listener. A real highlight of the set though was the interplay between the guitar and the pedal steel which, when they played in tandem, reached impressive heights.
American Aquarium closed the set with the anthemic ‘Burn, Flicker, Die’ as the crowd sang loudly together with them.
