When: 29 – 31 July 2022
Where: Baldersby Park, Topcliffe, North Yorkshire, England
In a little more than two weeks, and after a pandemic-enforced, three year absence, we will welcome back the full Deer Shed Festival experience. The twelfth edition of this family-friendly, three-day event with such great cross-generational appeal will once again be packed full of music, arts, science and sporting activities for the whole family to enjoy.
Built around a theme this year of the Pocket Planet and promoted as “a celebration of different things from different places”, Deer Shed Festival 12 will bring us a huge and diverse range of top-quality music, comedy, shows, science, sporting activities, spoken word and literary events, theatre, workshops, arts, cinema, and Wilderwild, an exciting exploration of the wildest spaces in the beautiful setting of Baldersby Park whose rolling pastures lie some six miles south-west of the market town of Thirsk.
Here are but five things that God Is In The TV is looking forward to at this year’s festival:
Stewart Lee presents King Rocker
The celebrated English stand-up comedian, writer, and director Stewart Lee introduces the anti-rockumentary King Rocker, the film that he and the venerable British TV comedy director Michael Cumming made about the cult post-punk band The Nightingales.
Stewart Lee is a long-time fan of the Birmingham-based band, its charismatic frontman Robert Lloyd and his previous group The Prefects and describes the two years he spent writing and presenting the project as “a labour of love”.
The documentary feature weaves the band’s story with that of a sculpture of King Kong that was erected in the city’s Bull Ring shopping centre in 1972.
Self Esteem
One of a number of acts this year who are making a most welcome return to Deer Shed, Self Esteem last appeared at the festival three years ago. On that occasion they played around Friday tea-time on one of the smaller stages. Illustrating just how far Self Esteem’s star has risen in the interim, this year they are second top of the bill on the main stage on the festival’s Saturday centrepiece.
Prepare to be dazzled by Rebecca Taylor’s supreme pop project where she will be supported by her red-hot band and three backing singers who will join her on her songs’ towering choruses and those fabulously choreographed dance routines.
John Francis Flynn
Deer Shed Festival boasts four music stages. The smallest of these is the Acorn Stage but headlining there on Friday night is John Francis Flynn, a big man, with a big personality, and an overwhelming talent. Describing himself very modestly as “a Dublin man, a singer of folk songs and player of windy instruments”, time spent in his musical company confirms he is so much more than this.
Having served the most credible of time on his home city’s folk scene for the previous decade, both as the frontman for the traditional band Skipper’s Alley as well as working with the likes of the Irish folk groups Ye Vagabonds and Lankum, last year John Francis Flynn released his exceptional debut album I Would Not Live Always. Check him out. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.
Delia Derbyshire Workshop
A name perhaps not immediately familiar to many, Delia Derbyshire was a highly influential electronic musician who during the 1960s worked with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, one of the sound units to be found at the national broadcaster. Her most famous work – something for which she was never credited during her lifetime (she passed away in 2001) – is the theme tune to the classic TV science-fiction programme, Doctor Who.
As part of this year’s Science programme, the team from Delia Derbyshire Day – a Manchester-based organisation which pays homage to this pioneer of electronic music – will be coming to the festival to speak about her life, her work and help us to create our very own Deer Shed theme tune using sounds that have been recorded from our immediate physical environment.
Yard Act
Deer Shed has a long and established tradition of showcasing local talent. Coming from the nearby West Yorkshire city of Leeds, Yard Act fit easily into that category. Recently named as this summer’s most-booked emerging act at European festivals, you can see exactly why. Released in January of this year, their debut album The Overload debuted at number 2 in the UK album charts and since then their considerable creative and commercial stock has risen even further. Only last week news broke of a collaboration between Yard Act and no less than Elton John who contributed piano to a new version of album track ‘100% Endurance’. Catch them early Friday evening on the main stage and get your Deer Shed 2022 experience off to a great start.
Full information on Deer Shed Festival 12 and the last few remaining tickets for the event can be found on the Deer Shed official website
Photo of Self Esteem: Simon Godley
