Ghost Road Fest is a brand new day festival with a mission to offer opportunity for the UK's most exciting up-and-coming bands, provide mentorship programmes and paid work experience for young people who are interested in a career within the music industry. The festival’s ethos strongly supports inclusivity, creativity and gender equality. It will be happening at the following date:
Friday, 6th November 2021 - Kolis London
Ahead of the festival I had a chat with Lori and Alexandra, the two masterminds behind this endeavour:
How did you come up with the idea for Ghost Road fest? What was motivation behind it?
Alexandra: Ghost Road was born from us needing a project in lockdown, what better project than a music festival that's aiming to offer the opportunity for new and upcoming bands as well as well-know names to share the stage! It's been keeping us busy and given us something to look forward to, knowing that one day soon we will be able to party with our friends again.
Please elaborate on your festival's ethos and why do you feel so strongly about it? Do you think the music industry should intervene with measures like quotas to create a more balanced industry?
Alexandra: Our ethos is to offer the amazing music from bands big and small. We want to offer equality and equal representation to help some less well known bands to share the stage with big hard hitters in the industry, and we actively encourage the creativity and ambition of anyone wanting to create opportunities. We believe there are enough amazing bands out there, there is no reason for festivals to be male heavy, we don't believe there should be token bands, but equally there is no reason for there to be, there is so much diversity and talent out there, it just requires people to actively make that change and open their eyes!
You have a very eclectic line up and DJ appearances for both events. Tell me a bit more about the headliners/acts so far and why do you think they are a good fit or these events?
Lori: Yeah of course, we picked a line up that we feel fits into the ethos of the festival, something that was really important to us is having proportional representation and I feel our line up represents this. It also gives a really good opportunity for bands who are up and coming to play with some really established artists in places where they might not have a huge following so they can play to new crowds and hopefully gain some new followers. The DJ's are super important as these are the folks to really push up and coming bands - and also gives these bands first hand opportunity to network!
Who are you partners are and what their roles are.
Lori: We've managed to get some really great partners involved with the festival, and it's a huge honour to have them involved.
Kycker - Kycker are offering ongoing advice about the festival as they run stages on major festivals across the UK.
Blackstar Amplification - Are offering amps for the festival.
Vocalzone- Are offering throat sweets to all artists as part of the rider.
Pistonhead Foundation - Are offering beverages to all artists as part of the rider.
These Bloody Thieves - Offering social media support across their socials including 'Fans for Bands'
The Zine UK - Ongoing support with advertisement of the festival.
Knight PR - Helping with gaining PR and write ups for the festival.
Festival line up:
Headliner: The Virginmarys & Riskee and the Ridicule
plus support from Weekend Recovery, SNAYX, Salvation Jayne, Sadness & Complete Disappointment, You Want Fox, The Pearl Harts & MOSES.
DJ's who will play the event:
Charlie Ashcroft from Amazing Radio and Kelly Chard from We Can Do It Records
Get your tickets here!!