One great way to find new artists is to attend one day mini festivals where you pay to see some of the bands you know but also get to check out the new names on the list. DRL Promotions are behind some of the best one day festivals including the award winning Bring the Noise festival. With events spread as far around as London, Manchester, Glasgow and Sheffield, chances are you may have already attended a DRL event. I sat down with Dean Lawrence to talk about it.
You have a Festival planned in Sheffield on the 30th of May, what can we expect from Bring the Noise?
We’re bringing all the best up and coming grassroots bands. We’re giving them a platform, there’s three stages running at the same time. We are just like a big showcase for these grassroots bands. You’ve got the main stage, they will be playing on every hour and then every half hour you’ve got stage two and stage three playing at the same time. So, you can pick what bands you want to go and see. The actual venue is a nice flowing space. You can just go between the rooms and we’ve got a big courtyard outside as well where there are food vendors so you can go out there. Have a little chill out.
Who are you most excited to see?
The good thing about being a promoter and doing these kind of festivals is 99% of the bands on are the bands that I want to see. So, I book a lot of the bands I want to see, it’s a beautiful job. But, Coach Party, I’ve been after them for quite a while and finally, we’ve got them as headliners. Andrew Cushin, as always, he is awesome, and the band at the moment for me is The Bracknell. I think they are just going to get bigger and bigger.
Are there any bands you’ve been trying to get for a long time then?
We’ve got The Manatees on, I think they’re in the same stable as the Covasettes. The Rolling People as well from Manchester. They’re a real good band as well. I think they’re going to go big. There’s another band on here that most people won’t heard of called Adult Leisure from Bristol they are brilliant. They’re actually touring America at the moment, I think they’ve got about 6 dates out there as well.
Any of the up and coming bands you’re excited about?
Yeah, so I’m working with this young band as well from Hall called the Glass House they’re a very good band. They’re getting better and better every time they put stuff out. We’ve got two bands coming down from Glasgow, there’s an all-girls band called The Marches, a very good band and we’ve got a band called Flair as well. If you have a listen to them, they’ve got, a very Glasgow sound, that heavy, deep, big sounds like, so it’s something different.
Is there any band that you look back on and they played a few years ago, but suddenly they’ve got massive and you kind of saw it at the time?
Yeah, you’ve got The Clause, I’ve been working with them for like 4 years. I’ve had them on a few events and just waiting for them to get bigger. We had The Lilacs as well when they were just starting out. Again, I think they have gone really big we had The Lottery Winners, they had headlined one for us and then the next year they’re doing like the Isle of Wight festival and now on tour with Robbie Williams.
Is the lineup all fixed now? Have you got any anyone left to announce or?
So the lineup’s fully done now, so everyone’s there, but we have had a band that will be dropping out, which breaking news, we’ve got the Kowloons from Liverpool and basically they’ve been offered a big support tour. Look, at the end of the day, we can’t stop you, you’ve got to go and do that. I’m happy for them to go and do something bigger.
So what are the challenges of putting on a festival like this?
Trying to get 32 bands, that can play for you and for me personally, being grassroots level or independent level, when you start working with agents, it becomes a different ballgame then. It’s the bands, you know, the bands that I want, I can go straight to the bands, you know, I’ve got this festival. No problems at all. You start dealing with management and agents and that and becomes a minefield.
Bring the Noise Won A Musos Award for Emerging Festival. So what was that experience like?
Oh, it was weird. So, I first I first got a message off one of my mates saying, “Oh, look at this mate, you’ve been you’ve been shortlisted for the Musos Awards.” I’m going to be honest with you here, like I’ve heard of the Musos Awards before, but never really paid attention to it. I had a look at all the other nominees, you know,
This Feeling was on there, Sound City Liverpool, and I thought, “do you know what? What an accomplishment just to be on the same list. Then we got shortlisted to the final six, and then I was like, oh, flipping hell, mate, “that’s even bigger”.
Then to find out that we’d won it, you just didn’t know how to take it, but since winning it, all the doors that have opened for us now, it’s taken us to the next level.
Were you were already going to the event?
We weren’t going originally, because it was a Thursday night, it was down in London, you’re never going to win it against the people who we were up against. But we got a little tip off to say, make sure you can come. So, we all went down there and like I say, it was just absolutely brilliant. The good thing about it as well, all the bands that we worked with before were all there, so they’re all in the crowd. We got off, after we had done our speech, all the crowd was chanting our name as well, because we work with them all. We had them all on our festivals as well. So, you know, they were a part of part of us winning it as well. So it was just a great achievement and after the people that were coming to us and giving us the cards and sponsors, trying to sponsor us and stuff like that, it just really takes you back.
What other projects have you got on?
So going forward, we’ve got the In The Know Festival at Network in Sheffield, that’s Saturday the 3rd of October. I’m just in the middle of booking the bands for that now. I’m trying to get in early with that and some of the bands we’ve got booked already, if I could tell you, you would be buzzing. So, we’re going to be doing some Bring the Noise gigs around the UK as well, different cities. We’ve got Glasgow and London.
I’m doing a few of the Indie Showcase shows, I’ve got one in the Dublin Castle, 5th of September. I’m going to do some in Manchester and Bristol coming up. Again, it’s just booking them in and getting the bands on. I’ve just set up my own website, the DRL Promotions website as well. On there, I’ve got an apply to play for all the bands.
So you can imagine our social medias, all the inboxes we get in, just can’t keep up. Then people posting, oh man, I’ve been messaging you for three weeks, and you have a message? And I’m like, oh mate, I don’t even know where your messages are, or is that many going on? So we’ve kind of set up a website, so people can apply to play and contact us quicker and it also just tells you about us and what’s coming up in the future.
I’m doing a little booking agency, I’m working with a few bands, so I’ll be getting them on a load of stuff, all the stuff I do myself, I’ll be getting these bands on. I’ve just got a band on who I’m working with on a gig in Gibraltar in July. At the moment, I’ve got a lot of people coming to me saying, “can we work with you?” And I’m like, yeah, mate, I’ll work with anybody. It’s always good to network and you get enough people working together with gig swaps and that something good will happen.
DRL Promotions can be found on their website – Home Page and on Instagram here – Instagram
