Redfest is a 2-day music festival featuring live performances on “The Main Stage” and “The Introducing Stage” and top DJ’s playing till 2am in the “FreshEra Dance Tent”.

Now into it’s sixth year, Redfest has gained a reputation for championing new emerging bands, solo artists and DJ’s,  2012 promises to be its biggest and best weekend yet! 

You had a bad first year because of the weather? 

Terrible first year, right from the word go. A nightmare with our application, the license was fought really hard by the residents. I finally got the license and then they got money together, employed a barrister and appealed against my license. So I had to go to court for that appeal hearing and that was almost a month before the event. I wasn’t sure at that point even if we were still going to have a license to carry on so that was all fairly stressful. 

Absolute nightmare, luckily I won the appeal and I got awarded all the costs because I had to employ barristers as well. Once it goes to county court you have to have a barrister, my legal fees were over £10,000 and in the end it cost them all about £40,000. I have the same trouble every year, we can go on to talk about that when they ask “what are the challenges of running a festival”, that is my biggest challenge every year. 

We had a terrible time with weather at the first festival. The whole area was washed out, it wasn’t just the redhill area, the M4 was closed and all the railway lines were closed. The festival went off fine, on the actual day of the festival the weather was great, it’s just that with all the floods everywhere it put people off coming. 

So we had a very poor turnout and I lost lots of money. I thought that’s it I can’t do that again and then what really  motivated me to carry on was that if I gave up on the first hurdle I’ve actually wasted all that money. I felt like I’ve got to do my best to persevere with it and recoup some of the money. We got good feedback from everyone that did managed to give me a bit of encouragement. 

We had some great acts in the first year, up and coming acts fortunately we tend to specialise in that. It’s nice to have them under your belt and say afterwards, oh we had them before anyone had heard of them but of course they don’t sell so many tickets. That year we had Newton Faulkner and Laura Marling, Laura came down with her mum and dad and they nearly didn’t make it because their house had flooded. They didn’t know if they should stay and sort their house out or whether they should come and bless them they made the effort. They came but of course that was at the time that no-one had heard of her and no-one had heard of Newton Faulkner and a year later they went stellar. 

You are a champion for new and emerging bands aren’t you? 

Yes we like to champion new bands and also wherever possible encourage local talent. That was the original idea behind the festival, I used to play in a band years ago in the redhill area and there used to be 3 or 4 really good live venues in those days. We used to get bands like The Cure, The Stranglers playing regularly in the area because they were fairly local. Then all of those venues turned into happy eaters or gastro pubs so there isn’t a live music venue in the area anymore. The nearest one you have to travel to is Guildford for The Boiler room or Brighton so I thought I wanted to get that scene going again. That meant local acts could play locally, we also get lots of local acts on the Acoustic stage. 

Why the name Redfest? 

Redhill, the first year it wasn’t actually called Redfest I think it was called Red Hill Park Festival because they were trying to re-name the venue Red Hill Park. 

It caused a lot of confusion as there is a park in Red Hill called Red Hill Park so in the end we decided for the second year, I don’t know who came up with the name, but someone came up with the name of Redfest. That worked out quite well for us really. 

Unfortunately now there’s about 4 other Redfest’s, there’s a book festival in London called the RedFest that’s held at the Red Lion Pub. There’s a BMX festival down in Cornwall called the RedFest because it’s held at somewhere called the Red Rock. There’s now a festival in Bristol that’s called RedFest because it’s held in Redstone. 

But there’s nothing else that’s like my festival, I suppose it causes a bit of confusion but I if you’re really looking to find our festival you’ll find it. We are normally at the top of the Google page. So that’s how we got the name Redhill. 

What food and drink will you have at the Festivaland how do you source it? 

Well quite a few of our food guys have been coming back each year; most of them come to me really. We get loads of applications each year from loads of people wanting to come along, so we’ve got a good range of food. 

Thai, Indian, fresh baked Pizzas, gourmet burgers, that kind of thing. We’ve got Jumping Bean Burrito coming this year and the bar guys try and source local ales wherever possible. We have got quite a few local micro breweries; we always have a range of real ales, ciders, lagers and all the spirits. My daughter is running a cocktail bus this year and basically that’s a double decker bus that she’s going to run and make cocktails in. That will be interesting to see how that goes.

Your Green ethos, I saw the calculator on your site? 

Apart from that really, I suppose, it’s very difficult to be green at a festival. Your obviously burning diesel fuel to generate everything. We’re trying to make more effort to recycle rubbish this year. We have actually managed to get the local authorities to bring in special bins for us to recycle our cans so that’s it really. We haven’t got any major green credentials to be honest, but we are working towards it. 

Have you ever looked at Julies Bicycle? 

Not really, as each year gets a bit easier to organise we can start looking at more things. 

What is your accessibility like? 

It’s very good, it’s a flat site, we have disabled parking area right near the main entrance and then from there it’s only 20 yards to get to the main arena. Then it’s a nice flat site, people who are disabled don’t have far to go to the main arena. We don’t have a viewing platform though. 

Tell us more about Orpheus? 

It’s a fantastic charity started by Richard Stilgoe, l well it’s actually in what was his house. It’s been extended over the years so now they’ve got a residential unit there that I think has got individual accommodation for 27 children. It’s for young adults so most of them are between 18 and 24 I think, they go there for 3 years and it’s to encourage them in performing arts. 

It’s music, drama, I think they do photography it’s an amazing facility for young adults with not just physical disabilities but learning difficulties as well. This year they’re coming along with a stand to raise the awareness of Orpheus, it’s only about 2 miles from the festival site, but still a lot of people in the area have never heard of it before. It’s been in the area a long time so they’re just hoping to raise the awareness and maybe do a bit of fundraising. They are hoping to sell things that will raise a bit of money for them. 

Day to day challenges? 

The licensing is always an issue but I suppose generally it’s booking the acts. It’s my biggest job, it’s what I spend most of my time doing and that is a challenge because honestly we’re competing with the major festivals. Quite often bands that I’m trying to book will not commit themselves until they know whether they’re getting slots at the major festivals. 

Because a lot of the major festivals will make them sign an exclusivity contract that wont let them play anywhere else, so that is one of the problems we have. The biggest challenges we’re having is getting a good line up together. It’s funny I always start off each year with what I plan my line up to be and what I end up with is probably 20% of what I was originally hoping for. 

But I’m really pleased with this year’s line-up it’s actually worked out better than I hoped. We did have a bit of an upset when we lost our Sunday headliners. The King Blues split up so that was a bit of panic for us because originally we were just a Friday and Saturday festival. This year we are running on the Sunday and I was only going to run on the Sunday if I got a strong enough headliner.

I managed to get The King Blues so it was all systems go for the Sunday but when they split up I was very concerned that at that late stage we was going to be able to get a good replacement for them. But in the end I’m really pleased we got Foreign Beggars, we are very happy with them. They are an act that I was trying to book the previous year so it’s all worked out very well in the end.

It was only a month or so ago and of course we had got all the artwork done, the posters, flyers, website was all finished and luckily we hadn’t gone to print with anything. But anyway we got over it! 

Do you want the festival to expand in the future or are you happy to keep it at the same size? 

I think I’m quite happy to keep it at the same size really, we have got more scope on the site to increase it but we’ve got a license for a 5000 capacity at the moment. We haven’t ever got to that, I’m hoping this year we can get to 5000 and it will be interesting to see how that works out. But I have no ambitions to make it bigger, it might creep up to 7000 or something but I’ve no ambitions to get it much beyond that really. 

Green Yurts? 

I don’t know if they’ve taken any orders yet. I’m going to have a couple of their yurts for the backstage area, I’m going to use one as a production office and one as an artist chill out room. Then we’ll have to wait and see if any of my campers book any of them, they may. I know I’ve got a few people who have made enquiries about coming along for hen parties, so that might be ideal. We will see, I have no idea how it will go or how many people take it up. It is expensive and as our audience is mainly younger, half of them by the time they’ve got their ticket and get to RedFest have not got any money anyway. 

I see that you’re supporting Alive and Well, what was your choice for picking them? 

That’s actually my best friend who helps me out each year at the festival. He is one of the co-founders of the charity and they’ve been out to Sierra Leone and bought a land rover and a drilling rig and shipped it out there. Then they trained some local people how to use them, so now that’s up and running they are fundraising to get another land rover and another drilling rig, to get another team. So basically that’s how I got to hear about them through him really. 

Anything else? 

We’ve got a few new exciting things this year we’ve not had before. We have got a Shisha tent and an Oxygen bar which is new and the Cocktail bar. 

Redfest takes place at Robins Cook Farm, Kingsmill Lane, Redhill, Surrey, RH1 5JX Fri 20th to Sun 22nd July 2012 

Tickets for the festival can be purchased via the website HERE