Truck Festival: celebrating summer with the cows

15 Aug 2006 Category: Events & Exhibitions, Music, Worldwide

For many “Summer” equals “open-air festival”: Fuji Rock, Summersonic, Lollapalooza, Glanstonbury, burning man etc etc… But who amongst you has heard of the “Truck Festival” run by Truck Records? This year it was held in a farmland in Oxfordshire, England for 2 sunny days at the end of July, but the tickets were sold out within 10 days to 5,000 people in early March already. What is so special about this festival? And are the organizers really that generous to pass on thousands of pounds from their profit to charities as they say? The other day I met P-C Rae, manager and one of the founders of Truck Records in Shibuya to find out.

Written by Chiemi

History claims, that about 10 years ago one of the original members of Truck came home with a great disappointment from one of the big open-air festivals and therefore decided to start his own festival together with some friends. At that time, the size of the festival was slightly bigger than a club event: 20 acts were featured and an audience of 700 people gathered for the first Truck Festival. In the following year, a first record was released from their own Truck Records label, which started out in one of their bedrooms…

P-C, could you explain to me why your festival and label are called ‘Truck’?

‘Truck’ stands for the vehicles we used to build our main stage of the festival. The label then just followed the name of the festival, since it was formed a year later.

So how big is your label? And what kind of artists are on it?

Now, we have over 50 items in our catalogue and that turned our bedroom hobby into a full-time business. People come and go, but usually we have 6 or 7 artists on the label. Our artists include The Electric Soft Parade, Piney Gir, Goldrush, Anat Ben David from Chicks on Speed and some more. We do get demo tapes, but since we don’t have an A&R man, we basically meet the artists through the festival. The label itself consists of a group of friends.

Could you tell me a little more about this year’s festival then?

Truck Nine (Nine stands for the 9. year) was held in a farmland of Oxfordshire in England on 22nd and 23 rd of July. The ticket was £40 for two days featuring 147 acts including bands we met at our local pub to bands covered by NME. One third of the line-up are local bands, another third are national touring bands and another thirds are from abroad. We have 6 stages at the site all together and the main stage was constructed out of 3 trucks. The second big stages were cowsheds. (laughs) And we also had small tents. A lot of people said, that the tents were too small, but I think that because it’s small, you get a good atmosphere.

£40 a ticket for the festival with 147 acts sounds like the ultimate bargain! Don’t you think about expanding the size and sell more tickets since the entire festival sold out within 10 days?

Well, we think this is the best size for us. If it becomes bigger than this, it will be un-manageable. We are going to keep our festival in this size.

I had a look at your web site the other day and realized that you announce the line-up in alphabetical order - just like the Yellow Pages… That is a bit unusual, isn’t it?

Yellow Pages! That’s what exactly it looks like! Well, usually the line-up of a festival gets written in different font sizes: the head-liners are in the biggest size and young bands are written in tiny letters. But that’s not fair, right? There are some young bands, who are much better than some big bands. That’s why our line-up is in alphabetical order and all in the same font size.

I think you are pretty brave to do that! How do you explain that to your big name headliners?

“You guys are not going to be announced in the big letters!” (laughs) But that’s what the Truck Festival is all about.

HaHa! I heard that there are some interesting activities going on through out the festival?

We set up a recording studio called Truck Studio on the festival site. Goldrush actually built it with their bare hands and it’s open for any band. The studio has its own in-house production team who is happy to work with any act: from kids bands to national touring bands.

The festival also donates some of the profit to various charities. Last year, we donated over £47,000 to over 40 charities.

Wow! Really? £47,000!

I feel like festivals these days - especially the ones in the UK - are getting more and more commercial every year. The money you spend on a ticket could almost buy you a nice holiday abroad, besides the site being completely plastered with corporate logos… What made you do the opposite and donate your profits to charities?

Well, simply the fact that there is someone who needs money more than we do. We are not rich either, but we have enough money to make living! So - if there are people who need money desperately and we can help them with the profit we make from music, then the music gets even better than it already is.

Great idea! But how do you actually manage to run the festival? And who do you donate your money to?

About 10 of us start to plan things about a year before the festival. That means we have to start it for next year’s event soon. The closer the festival, the more stuff we need to get done every day. Most of us are volunteers, for example electricians who do the electric stuff and or carpenters who do the stuff around the stage. Most local bands play for free and we only pay money for petrol and very low performance fees for bands who come from far away. Truck Festival is supported by thousands of people and created for them.

The charities we donate to are from all round the world, but one of the main charities is the Mali Development Project in Africa. Recent donations supported an education program for their teenagers to help themselves and also support the fight against HIV/AIDS in their country. We have a page about it on the web, so if you like, have a look.

I also heard that Truck Records runs a project called Truck Club Juniors. What is that exactly?

Truck Club Juniors is a monthly project for young musicians under 18 around Oxfordshire who haven’t had the chance to record at a professional recording studio before. They get a free recording day at our studio and support from our production team. At the end of the day, we supply them with some CDs of their music, so they can send it to some labels or to book gigs with. Like it used to be for us, it’s hard for kids to get a proper recording with their tiny amount of money they earn. So we just support those kids.

Do you hear back from them? Anyone who has become a successful musician yet?

Well, a lot of them disappear (laughs) and none of them has become huge yet, but there are people who became successful locally. There are so many bands in Oxford, so that’s good enough already.

Any future plans for Truck records?

We’d like to get some contract with Japanese record companies and we want to invite some Japanese bands over to England. I am a big fan of ASA-CHANG & Jyunrei. They are great! We think the size of festival is perfect now, so we want to improve its quality. There are good bands in Canada and Norway, too, so it will be great to invite some more of them to the next Truck Festival.

P-C, it was great to meet you today and thank you very much for the interview. One day I will come to your Truck Festival - promise!

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