Sari Schorr

CARLISLE BLUES/ROCK FESTIVAL 2022 “Whilst it is fully understood that there has to be a realistic, ultimate limit to perceived excellence, this year’s festival still managed to raise the bar” “Following the first Carlisle Blues & Rock Festival in 2007, each subsequent event has been acclaimed as better than the one before” Nice comments. Who could argue with that sentiment? The highly acclaimed Carlisle Blues Festival began in 2007 and celebrated five incredibly exciting and successful years with a weekend event in November 2011 which many regarded as the best UK blues festival of the year. 2012 even surpassed that, lifting the event into the top three of its kind in the country. Incredibly 2013 saw the festival leap to an even higher level and cemented it as one of the premier blues events on UK calendar. That 2013 festival was widely regarded as one of the country’s best ever blues events with the Royal Southern Brotherhood, Bernard Allison and Ian Siegal with The Mississippi Mudbloods headlining each of three monumental days. The event was forced to endure a last minute change of location in 2014 when the venue of 6 years closed it’s doors. Organiser Nick Westgarth managed to secure suitable venues and alternative hotels for the audience and moved the festival. It was, as ever, a big success but it came at a price. Nick, the sole organiser (committee of one), was unable to run the event in 2015 and 2016. Looking back, the key to the success of the Carlisle Blues (& Rock) Festival had always been the strength of the line up and its refusal to be restricted within a genre. Never shy to include acts leaning towards Soul or Americana, or Rockabilly or Jazz, it couldn’t guarantee to please all of the people all of the time but it did manage to please the most part of its audience for most part of the time. That ethos will continue when the festival re-launches in 2017. For the record 2012 saw a name change when ‘Rock’ was introduced into the title. The April 2012 edition of the Classic Rock magazine devoted several pages to blues referring to it as; ‘the new rock revolution’ and stated, ‘It would appear that blues is on a roll, the signs are there, the genre most certainly has a new energy but it’s not the old purist blues, which has always failed to attract or inspire the masses, it’s the high-voltage blues that’s giving the rock and blues scene a massive shot in the arm’. ‘It’s a great time for a blues boom, 2012 looks like being the year for it to happen.’ That was several years ago, the ‘BOOM’ didn’t exactly happen, more a ‘slow burner’ but the important thing is that there is now even more real talent on the blues scene and in a time of economic and government turmoil it appears there’s a growing dissatisfaction with the consumerism and commerciality in the likes of X Factor and The Voice. It seems there is a dissatisfaction pouring into the entertainment world which has been sucking the life out of real music for too long. We can only dream about sweeping changes with blues becoming the next big thing when it is, in fact, the perfect antidote to everything fake or hyped. Carlisle Blues Festival is, and always will be REAL MUSIC played by REAL MUSICIANS for REAL PEOPLE. NO fake, NO hype.