“Although we’re now entering July everything still feels like spring. The sense of coming up for air, and shaking sleep and fuzziness out of eyes and head, is both unmistakable and reassuring. We may not be out of the Covid woods but we are resuming the activities brutally curtailed in March two years ago. Joyously travel and music, and more so their combination, are back on the agenda. Red Rooster happened a couple of weeks back, this last weekend Maverick Festival, and next weekend, coming up fast, is Static Roots.
I wrote the story of Static Roots back in January 2020 just as the first names were being announced for the following July and everything seemed set fair for another grand Oberhausen weekender. Ah ashes and sand! However Dietmar Leibecke has persisted, held the faith – plus a few smaller nights with folk like Peter Bruntnell and The Delines in the interim – so that iteration five of this splendid festival is now belatedly about to happen. Pleasingly the majority of artists initially mooted will still be there, and all-in-all, as ever, the festival offers a strong and diverse line-up.”