The Ryland Caravan Festival is an annual festival put together by local musical eccentrics, Independent Country, and held in the outside amphitheatre at the Midlands Arts Centre (MAC) in Birmingham’s Cannon Hill Park. As it is takes place just as spring becomes summer, the elements can obviously be a bit temperamental – with punters being just as likely to have to deal with sunstroke as trench foot – but with the bar of the MAC within spitting distance, there’s always protection from whatever the unpredictable weather might produce with a bit of added alcoholic support.
The MAC’s amphitheatre is a fine, but underused, venue in South Birmingham. Built of stone slabs, it consists of a low stage and a semi-circle of banked seating around a flat, slabbed dance floor that can hold an audience of 400 or so. It may not have been packed on Saturday afternoon, but it pulled in a respectable audience that were entertained by a line-up that took in indie guitar music, cosmic country music and a little-known overlap from the festival organisers, that had plenty beaming from ear to ear and shaking their bits to the rhythm.
On arrival, the first of the acts that I caught at Ryland was local cosmic country combo Johnson and Finnemore. The sky may have been grey, but this six-piece with three vocalists were chill and wry, and a fine introduction to the festivities. Tunes like “We’re All the Same Round Here Until We’re Not”, “Baby Bird” and “Ride High” were suitably spaced out with Stewart Johnson’s peddle steel providing an eerie ambience. Their show was far from single speed though and a more up-tempo take on “The Gun” and a version of the Rolling Stones’ “Down Home Girl” injected a bit more energy into their set before rounding off with the fine title track of their debut album, Find a Love That Brings You Home.
Next up were festival organisers and self-proclaimed midlife crisis, Independent Country (pictured below). Taking old indie tunes and giving them a good basting with country and western vibes, they may have raised a smile but the band was no joke. All players were hairy of face and decked out in embroidered US country-style shirts and played a set that included versions of Nirvana’s “Come as You Are” (introduced with a smirk of “If you’re feeling depressed, the bloke who wrote this one shot himself. So, it can’t be that bad”), the Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Blues from a Gun” and PWEI’s “Def Con One” – to celebrate the time that Dolly Parton went to Stourbridge, allegedly. However, they rounded things off with an emphatic “Yee-hah, Bab” before plunging into Wet Leg’s “Chaise Longue” reimagined as hillbilly rock’n’roll and a Nashville-inspired take on Oasis’ “Rock ’N’ Roll Star”.
Just as the heavens finally opened up, jangle pop veterans, Michael Head and the Red Elastic Band were unfortunate enough to take to the stage. There was no rush indoors though, as it was soon clear that the audience of now middle-aged indie kids included a fair number of long-term fans.
Guitarist Nathaniel Cummings may have been sporting a Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen t-shirt but the sound was much more akin to Arther Lee’s Sixties psychedelic spacemen, Love with beautiful, atmospheric backing from Andy Diagram’s trumpet. This encouraged much singing along to the charming “Newby Street”, the wistful “Pretty Child”, “American Kid” and Shack’s “Gemma”, and as the rain petered out, a few even ventured in front of the stage to shake a leg.
Festival headliners were late Eighties and early Nineties indie pop favourites the House of Love, who took to the stage all dressed in black just as the clouds cleared away. There was even a burst of evening sunshine as they launched into set opener “Cruel”, which paved the way for a nostalgia-heavy performance that was almost totally drawn from the band’s first three albums.
The psychedelic sheen of “Christine” had plenty singing along with Guy Chadwick and a steady stream of punters started weaving their way towards the stage to shake a tailfeather. “Hope” was introduced as “a bit of disco”, despite having more of a Shadows-like vibe, while the tom-tom thump and surf guitars of “Burn Down the World” encouraged even more of the audience to move around. Indeed, by the time Chadwick and his merry men struck up the chords to “Shine On” there was quiet a crowd swaying and grooving, which was more than maintained by the howling guitars of “Destroy the Heart”. This clearly injected a bit more vim into the House of Love’s playing and encouraged enthusiastic smiles all round, before the set was finally ushered to a close with the more mellow “Love in a Car”.
