Firevolt Festival, Friday – Stockport UK
Firevolt festival was started by husband and wife team Stret and Bev in 2022 originally called Firestorm! Th
Altro...
Firevolt Festival, Friday – Stockport UK
Firevolt festival was started by husband and wife team Stret and Bev in 2022 originally called Firestorm! Th
Altro...Firevolt Festival, Friday – Stockport UK
Firevolt festival was started by husband and wife team Stret and Bev in 2022 originally called Firestorm! The festival began after a chance meeting between Stret and local farmer Karl, who visited Stret’s Recording Studio – Castle Rock Studios, looking for help booking bands for a new event. Stret and Bev became involved with Whitebottom Farm when during a tribute rock festival, Karl had organised he suggested, “You guys should do a rock festival.” As lifelong rock fans, their answer was simple: yes.
The whole festival has an amazing community and grassroots vibe, if you’d like to learn more head over to their website.
With this year being the 5th year of the festival we were very excited to make this our first official press outing!
We set off from home and drove through the Peak District to get to our destination, where we were greeted by a member of staff at the entrance, we had to drive down a single narrow road along the beautiful scenery and the River Etherow. Once we got the end, we were met by more staff who checked our tickets, gave us our wristbands and showed us where to park and camp. All the staff were lovely and made you feel really welcome.
Darren Wharton’s RenegadeOnce we found a spot and set up camp we found Nigel (media guy) in the barn at the Trooper stage to collect our drink tokens and managed to catch a bit of Renegade, the band fronted by former Thin Lizzy Keyboard player Darren Wharton. Luckily we were in time to hear them play “Jailbreak” and “The Boys Are Back in Town” where former Thin Lizzy frontman Ricky Warwick came on to perform the latter.
With 20 minute breaks between the bands on alternate stages, this meant we had time to wander around, there were plenty of food, drink and shop stalls, where the food and drink was very reasonably priced for a festival, with meals averaging at £10 and you could buy a pint of Firevolt lager for £5 which was very tasty. The decoration around the festival was great with signs, a skeleton and a kitted out old double decker bus where you could onto the balcony to enjoy the music from both stages.
The New RosesWe made our way to The Bludsucker Stage (Main Stage) to watch The New Roses from Wiesbaden, Germany. The New Roses were full of energy and a very good live rock band performing songs “It’s a Long Way”, “This Heart” and a perfect cover of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in a Free World”.
We loved their vibe and so did the crowd with a lot of them singing their songs back to them making it a real rock show. The energy continued with songs “Thirsty”, “The Usual Suspects” and “Down By the River”, really bringing life to the festival and got us geared up and excited for the rest of the weekend, we were gutted that they couldn’t play for longer but we do hope we get to see them play live in the future.
Ricky Warwick & The Fighting Hearts After a 20 minute wait it was time for Ricky Warwick & The Fighting Hearts, in front of a packed barn, so we knew this was going to be good!
Ricky kicked off their set with “Rise & Grind”, “Jonestown Mind” and “Celebrating Sinking” which the crowd enjoyed, then the rock party really started when they played new single “Seek Zen Destroy” which was recorded with Phil Collen of Def Leppard.
Before playing the next song, Ricky mentioned that when he wrote this song, he could imagine a female artist singing this with him, the song is called “Don’t Leave Me In The Dark” and the artist was Lita Ford from The Runaways. Ricky said “Unfortunately Lita wasn’t available today but Richard (bassist) does a very good Lita Impression”, he did do a good job to be fair.
Ricky & The Fighting Hearts manage to perform 17 songs in their set including one of our favourites “Fighting Heart” and finishing with “Free N Easy”. We really enjoyed their set and think that Ricky is a vampire because we can’t believe he is 60.
https://open.spotify.com/track/1mMGbaFNsDoEjbwWz74Ju1?si=uRzYTqGxSYyKp9z45h6q_g&utm_source=copy-link
Mason HillWith the sun going down it was time to go back to the Bludsucker Stag for the headliners Mason Hill with new lead vocalist Tom Ward, after the previous singer Scott Taylor unfortunately got diagnosed with a heart condition and left the band.
Mason Hill opened up with “DNA”, “We Pray” and “Twisted”, with the latter being our favourite. They performed with high energy and a great stage presence, it was really cool seeing a band play at night with the lights in the middle of nature, it made you feel like you were far away from civilization.
Unfortunately we got really tired from a busy day of travelling, setting up and getting our bearings of the festival and decided to go to our tent, luckily our tent was only a minute walk away and we could listen to the band whilst relaxing.
Mason Hill sounded great from the comfort of our sleeping bags, they played “Without You” and “Hold On” before finishing with an encore of “Burning it Down”, “Remember” and Against the Wall”
Even though we didn’t watch the second half of the set, we still felt the good vibes and we could tell that the performance was great by the cheers of the crowd.
It was a great day for us to discover new bands and music, we can’t wait for more over the weekend.
St. Jimmy and Rex 🖤☠️
All rights to the songs in this review are retained by the relevant artists and this site claims no rights over them. Photos were provided by Labrat Photos.
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