Review by Tim Marcus with photos from Sam Conquest Photography
We’re back at the St Leonards campsite just outside Ferndown in Dorset, for the third consecutive year, to cover the ever growing Loverocks festival. Now in its seventh edition, this festival, which started out initially as a festival of top tribute bands with one or two local originals bands thrown in for good measure, has grown year on year and is now a fully fledged festival which majors on bands from the NWOCR genre with a few more established bands included in the mix as well. As an indication of how the festival has grown, when we were here two years ago for the Thursday night “warm up”, there just two bands on, both on the smaller of the festival’s two stages, playing to a small gathering. Today, things are kicking off two hours earlier, at 5:00pm, and we have five bands waiting to entertain us, all from the main stage, which tonight is being headlined by Llanelli’s Scarlet Rebels, with the stunning Cardinal Black as the main support.
We’re kicking things off though with a band I’ve not seen before; a band that were loved and played a lot on his radio show by our sadly departed friend, Steve Beastie. And it doesn’t take long for me to understand why Beastie loved them so much.
It’s only a short set however this London five piece belt out some great 1970s influenced classic rock, in a style that has me very much in mind of the likes of Deep Purple and Rainbow from that era, albeit whilst vocalist Apostolos Liapis is good, his voice doesn’t quite carry the same power as that of Ian Gillan or Ronnie James Dio in their prime; he does however play a very mean flute! Hunted by Elephants is a great high energy and fun classic rock band and definitely one that has made its way straight onto my “must see again” list.
Following Hunted by Elephants is a band we’ve seen once before, I think it may have been at the Steelhouse festival back in 2021, and that’s The Howling Tides. What we get from this four piece band is a forty minute set with plenty of heavy blues and rock driven grooving riffs.
Front man Rob Baynes has a stand out vocal and leads from the front much as Jay Buchanan does for the Rival Sons. Stand out tracks for me from this short set were the second song in, “Blue Moon” which features a beautiful soft, bluesy and blissful guitar intro, “Fortune Never Favours Me”, and their set closer, “Crack My Sole” which was their first single back in 2018 taken from their self tilted EP of that year which I believe was produced by Aynsley Lister.
Next up was a gentlemen and his band whom we’d seen performing just a few weeks ago at a small, brewery based venue, at a benefit gig for Catfish’s Matt Long, The Mike Ross Band. Mike is a maestro of the slide guitar and his set was not too dissimilar to the one we heard from him at the Thameside Brewery last month; great playing from Mike as always against the background of some heavy grooves,
bass playing and drum beats from a very solid rhythm section. As much as I enjoyed Mike’s set last month in the indoor setting, seeing and hearing him playing on the big stage at this great outdoor festival, for me at least, seemed to raise the overall sound and experience of the band, (a project incidentally that Mike tells us he’s bringing towards a close), to a whole new level.
The penultimate band to take to the stage this evening are a band we’ve seen a couple of times over the past twelve months and thye’ve rapidly become one of our favourites. Featuring the awesome guitar playing of Chris Buck and soulful vocal of Tom Hollister, that band is Cardiff based Cardinal Black, who describe themselves as “the oldest new band in the world”.
Originally getting together as a trio (with drummer Adam Roberts) back in 2010 things were looking bright, however despite the hype and great hopes at that time things didn’t go to plan and a move to the US, and the band itself came to a premature end as Tom, Chris and Adam returned to the UK to pursue their own individual paths. The three lifelong friends remained close though and finally, in 2020, returned to making music together, adding bass player Sam Williams to the fold, to become the Cardinal Black that we know today (and tonight, we also have the addition of Tay Cousins on backing vocals and Gregg Hollister on keys).
For those like us that had been looking forward to hearing this set all day, there’s a little apprehension in the air as the band experience a few technical problems whilst trying to complete their sound check on stage which means that they don’t get underway until 8:55pm, some 25 minutes after their scheduled start time. Knowing how fastidious stage managers are about timings, particularly at festivals, does this mean that they’re going to get cut short and only be allowed to play for 25 minutes?
I guess only time will tell. They get things underway with “Tell Me How It Feels” a song that immediately highlights the soulful quality in Tom’s vocal. “Ain’t My Time” follows and includes some wonderful soloing from Chris. Amongst other songs we hear tonight are “Warm Love”, with yet more sublime soloing from Chris, “I’m Ready”, and “Tied Up in Blue”. Whilst it feels like it’s gone by in the blink of an eye, due to the flexible and accommodating nature of this wonderful festival, they eventually leave the stage at 8:35pm, some fifteen minutes beyond their original scheduled finish time, meaning that the earlier problems had only cut their set short by about ten minutes, considerably less than we had feared it might.
Headlining this evening are a band we’re experiencing for the third time in the past twelve months, having played at Loverocks last year and also at Steelhouse a few weeks later. Formed just six years ago in Llaneli, Scarlet Rebels, taking their name from the town’s rugby team, are one of a seemingly disproportionate high number of young new bands that have been emerging from South Wales over recent years and for me, typify what the NWOCR genre is all about; talented young musicians, writing and performing great new music, driven by current day events whilst being influenced and inspired by some of the giants of rock from years gone by.
Once again, a few technical problems as soon as the band are introduced onto the stage means that there’s a short delay before they can get underway however things are resolved pretty swiftly and by 10:15pm they’re underway starting their set with “Divide and Conquer” and “These Days”. Given the slight hitch at the start, front man and guitarist Wayne Doyle promises to keep the chat to a minimum and in quick succession we get “I’m Alive”, “Take You Home” and “You Take My Breath Away”.
The hard driving “Save Me” is next before we’re treated to the first single off of the band’s new album, “Secret Drug”. “Let Your Love Go” follows before Wayne then introduces a brand new song, and one that he informs us the band are playing live for the first time this evening, their brand new single, released just last week, “Streets of Fire”.
This is followed by a song that Wayne tells us is his favourite from the band’s last album, called “I Can Sleep Now” as he explains that it was written following his divorce and how he had only been able to find peace himself, after knowing that his ex wife had found peace following the break up. We then hear “Grace” after which Wayne tells us he shouldn’t have been here at all this evening as he had tickets to see the Foo Fighters playing in London! He’s full of praise though for the Loverock festival organisers as he explains how he was approached by them following a gig in Southampton and how they’d told him that they wanted to bring Scarlet Rebels back to Loverocks as headliners…….and here they are tonight doing just that.
“Let Me In” closes the main part of what has been a fabulous set and leaves me thinking just how much this band have grown on me since I first heard them twelve months ago. Much to everyone’s delight they’re brought back for an encore which comes in the shape of the clearly popular “Heal”.
Once again, it’s been a great opening day to Loverocks and whilst staying off site, we’re back inside our weekend’s lodgings within 20 minutes of the set ending and already looking forward to the next two days.
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