Not long now and preparations are seriously underway. The first tent is up, here spotted by a local on horseback...
We've a great line-up this year, including headline sets by The Young'uns and Gigspanner Big Band, plus other award-winning artists, such as The Breath, Blair Dunlop Band, Spiers & Boden, Imar, Maroon Town, and from Spain (one of the few international acts coming to the UK this year) Anxo Lorenzo Band - over 40 acts on three main stages, across 4 days on our beautiful new site in Kirkington which you can catch on video here.
There's not long left to bag yourself a tier 2 ticket before we move to tier 3 (at higher prices). We've plenty of room on the new site and we're a lot more "open air" this year, so we can accommodate a few more people.
Another of our special concerts takes place on Saturday afternoon - a tribute to John Prine, one of the most influential singer-songwriters of his generation, who died in April last year age 73. The two-time Grammy winner was honoured earlier in 2020 year with a Lifetime Achievement Grammy, and in 2019 was inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. In his humble, hilarious way, Prine was one of America’s greatest songwriters.
Kip Winter and Dave Wilson, themselves big Prine fans, will host the concert which will feature festival artists including Blair Dunlop, Ali Russell, Rodney Branigan, Keith Donnelly, Reg Meuross and The Henry Girls.
As always there'll be a great line up of food and drink too which you can see here. Fantastic veggie fritters and salads, gourmet burgers, wood-fired pizza, Thai street food, crepes and more.
Covid-19
As you'd expect things are a little different than they'd be in a normal year. Our aim is to make the festival a safe and comfortable space for all to enjoy.
All staff, volunteers, artists and traders will be required to have a lateral flow test prior to their arrival. We encourage everyone else to do a lateral flow test 24 hrs before arriving. We ask everyone to bring masks and hand sanitiser and to respect everyone else by maintaining social distance, especially in any enclosed spaces.
The Main Stage and Frontier Stage will be totally open stages this year, so please bring your own chairs and blankets to sit on. We'll be marking out safe spaces and corridors on the ground to allow social distancing. The Folk Stage will be covered but without the usual walls, and you'll need to bring your own camping chairs for there too.
All in all though, buoyed by the move to such lovely parkland, we're expecting our 14th festival to be the best ever! The campsite is bounded on one side by lovely lakes, and there's still time to upgrade your camping experience to a prime lakeside position with Tee & Toast Glamping - see here.
Before we sign-off for now, an important word about our 2021 main sponsor Lowdhams. Based 10 minutes away (I'm sure many of you will pass them if you cross the Trent at Gunthorpe on the way to the festival) Lowdhams are one of the regions biggest names in motorhomes and caravans. See their website here.
And finally, if you don't have much experience of John Prine's music (though his songs were much-covered), you can see a selection of his best on the website here.
Here he is with Grammy Award winning singer Nanci Griffith who sadly died just over a week ago. A beautiful moment captured on UK TV show Town and Country in 1990.
Here's to a great festival (and some great weather too)!
The GTSF Team