All Along the Wall
BRAMPTON “PHOENIX” RISES AS ALL ALONG THE WALL HITS THE ROAD
Just weeks after the North of England’s biggest roots festival - Brampton Live – was cancelled, the proverbial phoenix has risen from the ashes of the 16th Cumbrian music extravaganza.
The festival was due to take place near Carlisle between July 16-18 with a bumper line-up of artists from the UK, America and Canada but was sadly pulled by the organizers last month, amid disappointing ticket sales and decreased funding and sponsorship.
But now a new chapter has begun in the Brampton Live story. The specially commissioned, star-studded songwriting and poetry show celebrating Hadrian’s Wall, which was to be the centrepiece of the 2010 festival, is to take to the road under the banner “Brampton Live’s All Along the Wall”. It will now receive its official premiere on Sunday, August 22 at the first Green Phoenix Festival on the National Trust’s glorious Gibside Estate (left) at Rowlands Gill, near Gateshead, Newcastle and Durham.
The show features a diverse mix of some of the UK’s very best songwriters – Durham’s Jez Lowe, Cumbria’s Julie Matthews and Orkney-based Rory McLeod together with Boo Hewerdine and Ruth Notman and Radio 4 poets Kate Fox and Elvis McGonagall (all of whom will also perform solo sets at the Green Phoenix Festival).
The 75-minute performance is the result of the septet spending a week “on retreat” Big Brother style in a remote Northumbrian farmhouse and brainstorming ideas for this collaborative melting pot work which celebrates the past and present of one of England’s best known landmarks – and one of the Roman Empire’s greatest engineering feats – Hadrian’s Wall, situated just a few miles from Brampton. The Wall stretches coast to coast for some 70 miles of the most scenic areas of Northumbria and Cumbria and the artists have managed to reference many locations along the way. More on what the performers made of their experience can be seen at www.myspace.com/bramptonlive
The impromptu result was premiered at The Wave Centre, Maryport in January where it prompted a standing ovation from the audience – a performance recorded by Workington-based Fellside Recordings. The 23-track CD is due to be available at the end of July and manages to be both funny and poignant in a wide cross section of material. It includes tracks such as Haltwhistle Women by Jez Lowe, Rock of Gelt by Julie Matthews and Ruth Notman and poems including McGonagall’s Hadrian and Fox’s Opposite Side of the Wall.
Zora Bride of the Green Phoenix Festival says: “"It's such an honour for Green Phoenix to be hosting All Along The Wall. I suppose it's really living up to its name now, conceived in the west, written in the middle and launched in the East.
In a way, bringing a piece of Brampton Live here is a bit like lighting the beacons and we'll be happy to keep the fire burning for them until next year. We're really looking forward to Brampton Live bouncing back, perhaps we could do a follow up project 'Back along the Wall'? Until then we hope that everyone will come and raise a glass to Brampton Live at The Green Phoenix."
It has also been confirmed that All Along the Wall will be performed on January 26, 2011 at the famous Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow – the world’s largest winter music festival. The following evening Brampton Live Ltd directors Sue and Ken Bradburn will fittingly bring the show home to Carlisle (venue to be confirmed) and there will also be a spring 2011 performance at The Sage, Gateshead and a rural tour of villages in Hadrian’s Wall Country.
Funding for the All Along the Wall project has come from Hadrian’s Wall Heritage, Northumberland National Park and PRS for Music Foundation.
Says Ken Bradburn: “If every cloud has a silver lining, All Along the Wall is definitely ours. We were hugely disappointed that we had to cancel Brampton Live after 15 years of wonderful festivals but we were all determined that this special commission should have an ongoing life. Thanks to our funders that has been made possible and we are delighted that the new Green Phoenix Festival will now be launching the project in the wonderful surroundings of Gibside and it will then travel over the border to Celtic Connections early next year before returning to its roots in Carlisle.”
The first ever camping festival to take place on National Trust property, the Green Phoenix Festival (August 19-22) is a celebration of arts and sustainable culture with stages, bars and other activities powered by solar and wind power. It is expected to attract some 6,500 to the 18th century pleasure grounds. More information at www.greenphoenixfestival.org.uk
For further information and interviews with All Along the Wall artists or copies of the All Along the Wall CD for review or airplay please contact:
Jane Brace PR on (01243) 789554 / j.brace@virgin.net or Sue Bradburn at Emerging Music 01237-451933/451931/sue.emerging@btinternet.com
All Along the Wall will be lanuched at Green Phoenix Festival at Gibside Chapel, near Gateshead on Sunday 22nd August 2010.
