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| Grace Savage performing at Enzo, which was packed out for the whole event. |
Festivals come and go throughout the Spring and Summer and nearly all of them are vibrant and special, not to mention really exciting and fun to play.
But the Words and Music Festival is really particularly close to my heart, and being my 'home' festival, gives me a chance to play a full-on part in promoting it and helping out as well as performing.
Running a whole event such as this 'Enzo Acoustic Zone' which has over the last few years become a regular fixture at the festival can have it's own stresses, especially for someone with a natural shyness (or more specifically social anxiety) such as myself, and many artists in fact. Whereas in a recent gig, I allowed myself to shake off some of the pre-gig nerves in a run around a rainy car park, at this event I have to look after the other artists, help them to keep calm while getting anything they need done for them, liaise closely with the sound engineer (my good friend and regular music collaborator Dayve Dean in this case) and politely fielding any queries from members of the public, requiring me to suppress my own nervous energy and my natural desire really to get away from everyone, find a quiet space and maybe warm up on the guitar or dispel some nervous energy in some other way, in ways that I might normally do.
Anyway, any level of draining, nervous energy more than paid off by the bucket load both due to the incredible talent of my special guests, and the the wonderfully music-savvy, listening, attentive, music-mad audience that is a feature of this wonderful festival as a whole.
The soulful, earthy, gorgeous vocal tones of and wonderful new songs from Tiki Black, poignant, incisive, witty poetry of Oliver Lomax, the perfectly crafted songs of top producer Nigel Stonier and, well... what can I say about Grace Savage, a truly incredible talent, and a privilege to introduce her on stage at a point in her career when she has just been Radio One artist of the week, and with 4 titles of UK beatbox champion... just amazing.
Please do check these artists out.
So very privileged to have such huge talent at our #EnzoAcousticZone this afternoon @EnzoNantwich - every set was so different and so brilliant. pic.twitter.com/W1bCmKVL0D— Words&Music Festival (@wordsnmusicfest) October 14, 2018
