Phil Wolvin 
So if you love live music, you go to see all your bands play live. You might meet the band, they turn out to be really cool. They like your posts, you feel part of the scene. What if you take it further? You could end up writing for a blog, or you could organise your own gig. Take it a bit further and you are part of putting on a festival.
I met up with Ian Chislett, part of the team putting on Reyt Fest, a two-day, two-stage festival in Rotherham. The Kairos have been announced as headliners for the Friday night. The Saturday headliner is still to be announced. I have a sneaking suspicion that this will be a massive local band and the rest of the tickets will fly out when it is announced. This festival has a stacked lineup, including some bands I have seen and would recommend, and others that are on the list of bands I would like to see.
What made you want to do your own festival?
Well, I was asked to do it by a friend who is part of The Reytons’ community at Tramlines Festival last year. Basically, he just asked me, do you want to get involved with a festival? He’s got the land, he knew the farmer, and they have had festivals on the land before. He knew that I had contacts with bands and contacts with fan communities. So I got involved, and it’s been full steam ahead since.
How long has this been in the planning?
Well, he’s been planning this in his head for a year or so before I got involved, but that was July last year. We started getting the bands, doing all the research, and getting quotes and everything over the last six or seven months.
Which band are you most excited for?
Do you know on Instagram you get Instafest, where you get a festival lineup based on your listening? Well, I’ve basically picked my own festival, it’s great. Pet Needs are right up there, maybe the first band I went for. Then Spangled (who played Gig Life Gathering 4 in Cheltenham – see Feelin’ Holy post), we went for them and they signed up, and then you’re basically just picking bands. Another band is from Bristol with all-female members, IDestroy. I had a space on the second stage, emailed them, and they’ll play. So now it’s snowballing and people are coming to us. Daisy Peacock got in touch, she’s local, we had a listen to her music and signed her up.
Do you still have slots left to fill?
No, no, it’s all full, unless someone has to drop out. We’ve got a list, we had 40 applicants for the second stage. Unfortunately, we had to say no to a lot of them. It will be main stage and second stage alternating between them. For most of the bands we will have half-hour sets, with half an hour in between bands. Between the top two bands on the main stage, you’ll get 45 minutes to play, and they get the full 45 minutes.
What were the unexpected challenges you’ve come across?
The hardest bit was actually selling the tickets, to be honest, because it’s such a difficult time of year. We went on sale in November, which was close to Christmas. People haven’t got the money. We expected we’d do all right, but the people we are talking to have said we have done really well, apparently. We thought we would struggle because Tramlines went on sale at the same time, and Y-Not announced at the same time.
We’ve got a thousand followers on Facebook and most of the tickets we have sold are to people we don’t know, so that’s really good. The people we do know have already bought tickets. If everyone we knew said they had already bought a ticket, then we would be worried. Where are we going to sell the other tickets?
We’ve got a few discount ideas for ticket sales, and you will see some competitions for ticketholders, with special experiences around the festival like access to small acoustic sets and recordings.
So what’s the capacity then?
It’s 1,500, right. That’s not the capacity, that’s what we got the licence for. The actual land and the arena have capacity for 5,000, it’s a big area.
So could you extend if you want?
Not this year. We’re quite happy keeping it small, but it’s got room to move and expand in the future.
How’s the logistics?
It’s great. I’ve never had so many quotes for portaloos, fencing, and things like that. Doing deals with security and all that. The land’s great because it comes straight off a road. You’ve got a large field for parking, a separate field for camping, and then the actual arena. They’ve done festivals there before, so it was just about building the brand and getting the bands in. Getting the bands is the best bit, it’s the whole point of it.
Details of Reytfest can be found here Reytfest | Independent Music Festival | Rotherham and on Instagram here Instagram
Colin