Lovely to see you back for PART 3!! I hope you are enjoying this series so far. I’m having a great time reciting old memories and going back through my archives for old photos and things. Makes me appreciate how far I have actually come 🙂
Let’s dive into the next part shall we!
“I Want To Put On A Festival”
So, this is where the exciting stuff starts to happen! And the part of my journey you are probably all much more familiar with 😉
But before we dive into that part, I need to briefly go back a little things I touched on in Part 2.
I mentioned in the previous blog that my relationship had ended at the beginning of 2018 – it hit me really hard; so hard in fact that the next day I went out and bought two pet rats to compensate (which was actually the best thing I ever did).
This happened around the same time as I started up my ‘Rock Nights’ again and then branched out; just to give you a more accurate sense of time scale. I’m mentioning the breakup because this was actually one of the main things that triggered my big burst of inspiration, so feel it’s appropriate to leave that in.
Honestly, trying to remember everything as it happened is rather difficult – bare with aha!
So, before I actually branched out into my own little world of “JodieBowie Rock Nights”, I also had a little idea, which only one person knew of at the time; but before I go into more detail with that, we first need to talk about how I discovered the awesome group that is ‘New Wave of Classic Rock’.
I can remember quite distinctly, walking down the road in the town I live in, music in my ears blasting out my brain, listening to my own ‘local bands’ playlist on Spotify, when suddenly a selection of songs started playing. I hadn’t heard these songs before, but they were so good I couldn’t skip them.
They were “Now You See Me” by Mason Hill, “Ratio” by Massive Wagons and “I Don’t Give A Damn” by Those Damn Crows. I thought these songs are so good, and I was under the naive illusion that I was the only person who knew these songs existed – so I had to go home and find out who these awesome bands are!
At the time, they were pretty known, but not on the scale of which they are today. I saw they were playing a festival in Wales called Steelhouse! Which must’ve led me to discovering the Facebook group ‘New Wave of Classic Rock’. In discovering that group I opened up a Pandora’s box of bands I had never heard of before, but they were all so awesome, talented, mind-blowing, and loved by so many people like myself, and these bands were from all around the UK.
The next thing I noticed was…. not a lot of them came down my way.
By this time, I had a few upcoming shows, one being my first JodieBowie ‘Rock Night’ and the other being Marco’s show at the Anvil (I spoke about these in Part 2), so I was already getting back into the gigging routine.
I was still dealing with the hurt from my breakup that happened in February of 2018. I wanted to get back into putting on gigs, and had some booked in, but I was also struggling massively with my mental health. I went on a brief holiday away; I actually went back to my hometown Didcot to visit my Nan for a week, and whilst I was there, I went to Cardiff for 3 or so days to catch up with some friends.
On one of the days in Cardiff, I went to hang out with my best friend Luke and we had a very lovely day – at the end, when he walked me back to the train station we had a little chat about life, ambitions etc, and I said “I want to put on a festival” and he literally said “if anyone can, you can!” and said that I should just go and do it.
At the time I had shrugged this comment off, but maybe a few weeks later? I stayed up all night planning exactly how I could put on a festival. It looked A LOT different to what became reality, but I had planned everything. I phoned Luke to tell him, and we spent hours on the phone talking about it. He’d ask me questions like “how would you do that?“, “have you thought how this would work” etc, to help it really feel like a reality. I emailed several venues with my idea, and I really wanted it to take place in New Milton.
I was thinking of having 3 stages so that a lot more bands could play. I had someone design me a logo, and things took shape… but nothing really happened.
My dream of a festival kept growing in my head, but it wasn’t really getting anywhere. I had a meeting with someone in the New Milton community and pitched my idea. They were really keen to support it, but when they spoke to their colleagues, I was left with a financial proposition I don’t think anyone could afford, let alone 22-year-old me!
So, I went back home, determined with what I wanted to do and spoke to my parents. My parents (especially my Mum) probably would’ve said ‘yes’ to whatever I asked, but I told them not to. I told them that they HAD to let me pitch this idea to them myself, and they should only support me IF they think it’s going to work.
I pitched my exact idea to them, and I gave them a figure which I needed to make this festival happen. Essentially, I asked my parents for a loan.
Luckily, they supported me and felt like my proposition was a pretty good one… so I had secured myself the finances to get the show on the road, now I just had to figure out how the heck that happened.
I should probably also mention that I tried my absolute hardest to also try and get sponsors for the festival, and it was harder than trying to get blood out of a stone! However, luckily for me a little company named “Cloven Hoof” who do a rather yummy, spiced rum were kind enough to endorse me. So that is how I became endorsed by Cloven Hoof – they usually endorse bands and musicians, but they decided to help me out which is very kind of them.
I also had a lot of help/advice along the way from the legend that is Brad Marr of Massive and also South Wales promoter Mark Christiansan. Again, very grateful to them for helping guide me and believing in me to help pursue a dream of mine.
I emailed the people at The Talking Heads as I knew they also owned The 1865 which is a 700 cap venue, and that was the perfect size for the sort of event I was envisioning. They showed me round, and gave me a figure for hiring the venue, secured a date and then all I had left to do was book the bands and worry about the rest after the line-up was confirmed and announced.
I put out a post in New Wave of Classic Rock and also my personal page; I must’ve had over 300+ bands apply! I’m not joking, I would be sat in my living room on a daily basis with my phone making all sorts of pinging noises with bands putting themselves forward. This really helped, as even though I had an idea of who I wanted, I didn’t really know which bands were popular etc. This also really helped get my name out there too!
The first band I booked for my festival was “Stop, Stop!” of course. I had no doubt they were who I wanted on my line-up. Originally I wanted them to headline, but they wanted me to aim higher as it were. After that I booked in bands such as The Wicked Jackals (who I was already friends with), Beth Blade & co (seeing as it was Luke’s idea!), The Outlaw Orchestra, and 27 Days; now I was left with finding some bigger bands!
I KNEW I wanted Massive Wagons to headline. I found a contact, and I was nervous as hell reaching out to a band like Wagons; baring in mind my experience at this point was almost zero, especially on the festival front, so I was expecting a hardcore ‘no’ from most bands of that sort of status. Luckily, they came back with very positive words, one of them being ‘yes’. I was absolutely gobsmacked and over the moon!
The next bit of good news was that “Those Damn Crows” were also keen to be involved, another achievement I didn’t expect, and finally “Bigfoot” also said yes.
That left me with one more slot to fill. Originally it was being held for a local band, but they didn’t seem too interested and also weren’t in a rush to get back to me. Myself, my friend Jordan and my Dad went to see The Dead Daisies in Oxford as part of their ‘Winterland Tour’, and Marco of course heard the news I was looking to put on a festival (Wagons were actually the support band for this tour too), and put himself forward for the final slot. Honestly, I wasn’t too sure about it; but I knew at heart it would be a really good thing for me to have him on the bill so I gave in and my line-up was complete!
I decided to call my festival ‘NOZFEST’. Why? Well, so many people said I should name it after myself… which personally I think is a little weird and kinda egotistical… plus “JodieFest” doesn’t have much of a ring to it. However, my Dad has been calling me “Noz” since the day I was born, because I have rather large nostrils that inflate when I’m angry (thanks Dad) and ‘NozFest’ sounded quite cool… so it stuck. So, just like that… NOZFEST WAS BORN!
Aaaaand….. we can get into more of that in PART 4!! 😉
P.S I know this series is probably gonna be a bit long, but I’m having fun writing it, and I hope you guys are enjoying ready it. It was a long journey to get where I am now, that’s for sure.
I hope you have enjoyed this blog, don’t forget to keep an eye out for PART 4!! Which hopefully won’t take me as long to publish.
You can also find me on social media by following the links below:
INSTAGRAM: JodieBowie
INSTAGRAM: Nozfest
FACEBOOK: JodieBowie
FACEBOOK: Nozfest
FB GROUP: Nozfest
WEBSITE: www.nozfest.org
YOUTUBE: JodieBowie
See you on the next one!
Jodie x ❤ x
I love Baz so much! He his an incredible frontman, in my eyes. I really enjoy watching him perform on stage, and he has a good repour with the audience too. He never stops moving, not even for second, even in-between songs! It’s incredible! He reminds me everso slightly of a modern day Noddy Holder of Slade, especially in his tartan suit. The stage really suits him, and I honestly cannot fault him as a performer – he is definitely a frontman I look up to.
JodieBowie 