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Edale Bluegrass Festival News: Tom Travis Calls It A Day

After 12 years as organiser, Tom Travis has decided to “call it a day” over the
Edale/“New Edale Weekend” Bluegrass Festival

By Tom Travis

“It feels right that we should end it now” said Tom, speaking of the Edale Festival. “Two years ago, it didn’t feel right to let it go - but now, somehow, it does. I’m sure I’ve explored all the avenues and contented myself that we can’t turn the clock back. We’ll just have to enjoy it in or memories.” Tom explained his momentous decision:

“People had been urging me to move it since about 1990, but they didn’t fully appreciate that it was what they criticised that made it work. The buzz of energy created by the exotic mix of visitors - the Bluegrassers for the pickin’ and the non-Bluegrassers for the crowd atmosphere, heightened by the energetic outbursts of spontaneous music. It didn’t make money - but that wasn’t what it was about. As long as we were having fun and getting to hear the best Bluegrass in the world and nobody was losing, who cared! OK, so the farmer made a few quid on the booze and the food - so what! We were invading his home, climbing his walls and ploughing up his grazing land. What mattered was, it worked.

The Big Bands
“The structure I inherited from Steve Read had its’ faults from a commercial standpoint but it had merit enough a bring us the likes of The Johnson Mountain Boys and Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver. And later, during my tenure, the great Ralph Stanley (with his legendary band the Clinch Mountain Boys) and Alison Krauss with her band Union Station, picking through a dramatic Peak District thunderstorm. We all had a ball and there’s no denying it. And don’t go away thinking that I didn’t try to hold on to what I knew was a precious commodity - it was the farmer who called time. He and his family had had enough of the yearly invasion.

Tom appeals to the People of Edale
“My first thought was to take the festival back to Edale village. That is what I had in mind when I prepared a document and presentation in an attempt to win over the Edale villagers. In that same village hall where the festival began in 1976, I took pains to impress upon members of the Parish Council and representatives of the National Trust the importance of Edale to the world of Bluegrass music - how the name of their village was now synonymous with Bluegrass in the UK. I implored them to take the festival to their hearts, to become stakeholders in its’ future - with any surplus profits going to the village to improve amenities. I suggested a twinning with Rosine, Kentucky, the birth place of the music’s founder, Bill Monroe. I proposed a Bluegrass museum based in the village with events, including Appalachian clogging, in the village street throughout the year and a connection with the Folk Trains now running regularly to Edale from Manchester and Sheffield.

“The answer: A polite ‘no thank you’.

“They didn’t want the crowds, nor the traffic generated, even though I had told them about a scheme I had discussed with the Burton Council for leaving cars outside the valley and bussing people in.

On to the New Venue
“And so to Nottingham, after looking at several other sites, none of which proved suitable. Knowing that Bluegrass music, at its present state of development, is not a commercial proposition, it was my intention to attempt to duplicate the Edale experience by attracting the same heady mix of juxtaposed people - to create that tension which, together with exhilarating Bluegrass music, makes for atmospheric fireworks.

Sponsors support Tom
“After a conversation with David Allen, on BBC Radio 2, in which I had discussed my future plans for Edale, I received a ’phone call from Richard Limb, the Leisure Safety Director of a large Civil Engineering Group. They liked the idea of the new festival and wanted to be involved. Having had experience of the financial risks involved in staging Bluegrass music outside Edale, I welcomed the support.

“They were wonderful people to work with and, as anyone who visited the Nottingham event could see, they provided planning and facilities of the highest quality. We’d only secured the Wollaton Park site in late January, which left little time for promotional activity for this first Nottingham venture. I booked Claire Lynch and her Front Porch String Band. Claire had just recorded her second Grammy-nominated album Silver and Gold; her previous recording, Moonlighter, had received a Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album and she was a nominee for Best Female Vocalist 1994 and 95 at the IBMA Awards.

"Bring in new type of music" say the Sponsors...
“Although an artistic success and earning many encouraging comments about its new site, the festival lost money. Now as artistic director and not organiser, I was asked by the festival financiers to consider ways of improving visitor numbers in the future. One could see from the cash flow projections produced that to cover present losses and reach a position when profit could be generated might take many years. But, although committed, the festival’s new backers considered it longer than they considered permissible. Eventually, they wrote to me suggesting that I introduce other types of music.

“After several heart-searching days, sleepless nights and a telephone conversation with Steve Read, in which the situation was discussed thoroughly, I reached my conclusion. It was time to call it a day. The facts are: I’m a Bluegrass man and I’m in it for the music that I’ve been steeped in for almost forty years. It is not my ambition to be a Folk or Roots festival organiser - Cambridge and Ironbridge are already doing that very well.

“The experience has taught me one thing: That Bluegrass needs more promotion so that event organisers who come after Steve Read and me will have available audiences big enough to support booking the best Bluegrass bands in the world. Just like Edale.

“My involvement in the BBMA will provide ample opportunity for me to go on telling as many people as possible what a great music Bluegrass is and to encourage them to share with me the life of enjoyment that it offers.”

Tom is Chairman of the BBMA.

Bev Williams, of Milnrow, who was MC from the first Edale festival up to  1990, and again in 1998, has sworn that he will not let Edale die.

Further reading in NWBN: [ July 1998 |  July 1997 | Sept 1999 ]

Updated 23rd Jan 1999