EarPipe Talks to Tom Baker about Field Day 2008 and Eat Your Own Ears

Thursday, July 31st, 2008 | Event Preview

Field Day will be arriving on London’s door step for the second time on the 9th August. Taking place in Victoria Park, Field Day promises the alternative festival experience with music from the leftfield combined with that village fete mentality. Headlining the day out will be the Foals, Mercury nominated Fionn Regan, Mystery Jets, Magistrates, Richie Hawtin (Minus, Berlin) with a very exclusive visuals show by Ali Demirel, King Creosote (as a duo), Wild Beasts, Simian Mobile Disco, The Notwist and many more. All for under 30 bucks!

We got to talk to Field Day’s father and organiser Tom Baker from Eat Your Own Ears about this year’s festival.

hi tom, firstly for our readers that don’t know, tell us about you, what you do at eat your own ears and how field day came about?
Me and my girlfriend Natalie (who is currently putting together the Village Mentality Village Green area at Field Day this year) put together a free event a few years back outside the Griffin pub in Old Street for 1000 people a day over a summer weekend called Return Of The Rural; a village fete with live acoustic acts James Yorkston and Beth Orton alongside acts like Clinic and Four Tet. Marcus who ran the Griffin and was involved very much in making the event happen, so after the success of this we all thought we should do something bigger and on a grander scale.

A year later Marcus confirmed the use of Victoria Park and I drew up a list of people i thought should be involved – Adventures In The Beetroot Field, Bugged Out, Bloggers Delight and Homefires so we have a strong net work to promote the event through. I then started drawing up all the bands i wanted to play and started talking to agents. Field Day was announced…

Eat Your Own Ears was started by me 6 years ago at 93 Feet East on Brick Lane, London to work with independent record labels such as Domino, Kitty Yo, Rephlex, Rough Trade to showcase new acts alongside established artists. Eat Your Own Ears now works with various labels as well as a selection of artists promoting in various venues mainly in London.

I was one of the first promoters to work with the likes of Danger Mouse (aka Gnarls Barkley) Four Tet, Bloc Party, Peaches, The Kaiser Chiefs, Maxino Park and many others well before any press or media hype, Mercury award winning artists Franz Ferdinand and Antony and The Johnsons, and promotes 2007 Mercury award nominated artists Bat For Lashes, Jamie T and Fionn Regan.

I’m continuing to work as director of Eat You Own Ears with an EYOE series at Indigo in April and various gigs in venues across London from the Scala to KOKO to Shepherds Bush Empire to Bardens Boudoir…

What can we expect this year from Field Day?
After many discussions following our first Field Day last year we felt we had to do it again and make it better. We have been planning ever since, in fact it feels very much like a new festival.

We are all having lots of production meetings, sending out advances and info to the bands and of course making sure posters and flyers are everywhere and mailouts are going out, so lots of hard work and lots of fete things like bunting, ribbons and aprons arriving and stacking up the office

What’s new for Field Day this year?

New to Field Day this year is a dedicated village green area.
Inspired by summer sports days and country fetes.

How do you think the village mentality area will go down with the punters and how do we get involved?

Be great, like a village fete Village Mentality will host side- stalls and activities throughout the daytime, ranging from sack-racing to splat-the-rat to the ‘eat as many carrots as you can’ contest and the Tug O’ War.

Last year there were some troubles with queues, toilets, sound and food. what happened and is everything all sorted for this year?
This year we have brought in specialist events agency Ear To The Ground to ensure this years exciting line up is matched with full event management. Ear To The Ground has a wealth of experience in running a variety of events in England and was recently responsible for launching this year’s Liverpool European Capital of Culture.

Using Ear To The Ground’s experience of providing for large events, we’re going to make sure that the number of toilets is more than adequate to service the site this year and this provision will be significantly above the recommended level. These will include both normal portaloos and also urinals which can reduce queues substantially.

One of the biggest challenges that any promoter faces working in an urban park is getting the sound levels from the stages right. Every local authority has rules about the amount of noise you can make to ensure that people living nearby aren’t unnecessarily disturbed. We’ve been working with the local authority since November last year and have employed a specialist noise consultancy, Vanguardia, to redesign the site and calculate what levels we need to put on a great show.
Vanguardia have worked across live music from Wembley Stadium gigs to the Download festival and are very well regarded within the business.
We are confident that with the conditions we have negotiated for our entertainment license and the day to day management from Vanguardia, we will achieve a significant volume increase throughout the site to complement the exciting line up we have secured this year.

In terms of eating and drinking we have over 100 metres of bars this year provided by Peppermint, who are behind the bars at some of the UK’s most innovative and exciting festivals including Bestival, The Glade and The Secret Garden Party to name a few. There is also a wide variety of food on offer including gourmet burgers, delicous handmade pies and Cakes; vegan & veggie wholefood, Mexican food peddled from a Volkswagen Beetle and the infamous Tiny Tea Tent.

Who or what are you most excited about this year?
We recommend you see as much as you can but some highlightswould have to be Foals who played mid bill last butare now headlining the Converse / Eat Your Own Ears main stage. Their mix of stridentpost- rock / jazz / pop and electronics and poly-rhythms are intense yet catchyand should get everyone dancing… Ifyou’re a fan of Battles then you should definitely check out Foals.
Weare very lucky to have dance music pioneerRichie Hawtin playing a
special2 hour set with unique visuals by Ali Demirel on the Bugged Out stage. You can also shake a leg next door in the Bloggers Delight tent to local heroes Trailer Trash, Wet Yourself, Durrr and many others.

Overon the Homefires stage you should catch Mercury nominated Fionn Regan who plays his first London show for a long while;similar to Dylan’s early albums, but with the flow of Nick Drake… FionnRegan’s live sets are beautiful and beguiling.

Baltimore’s Dan Deacon brings his own weird takeon electro noise rock to the Adventuresin the Beetroot Field and NME Stage as he takes in influences from Devo to Talking Heads to the Residentsmixes them up and delivers a sound that could be somewhere close to LCD Soundsystem on crack…

Are there any official Field Day after parties we should be getting ourselves to?
The Official Field Day after party at The End 11pm – 7am Featuring bands and dj’s playing records including Crookers, Brodinski, Foals, Mystery Jets, Filthy Dukes and more.

£15adv www.ticketweb.co.uk £12 NUS/£16 on the door.

What makes Field Day different from your regular GlobalCreamW4s?
Its a central London event, and a good day out for a very reasonable ticket price for the 5 stages and amount of acts you can get to see and some great mix of music from folk to dance to indie to electronica, and by some bands that don’t play often or at all the other festivals.

Which acts/DJs are you particularly enjoying this year?
I am really into Santogolds album, Bon Iver’s album I am addicted to Radioheads album even after so many months of constant listening – Errors are great live as well

And finally, what would be your one tip for Field Day this year?
Get their early to see Noah and the whale and also catch Richie Hawtin, Fionn Regan, Dan Deacon, Foals and as much as i can really…

Field Day takes place at London’s Victoria Park in Hackney. For more information and tickets go to http://www.fielddayfestivals.com/

Tags: Field Day, Foals, James Holden, Richie Hawtin, Simian Mobile Disco, The Field

1 Comment to EarPipe Talks to Tom Baker about Field Day 2008 and Eat Your Own Ears

Earpipe Looks Hazily Back at the Clubs, Festivals and Parties in 2008 | EarPIPE
January 3, 2009

[...] severely pissed on festivals, Bestival was completely washed out whilst EarPipe got pissed on at Field Day which had a solid line-up and a lot to make up for from last year. Unfortunately, the rain meant [...]

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