Thursday, 09 February 2012 
Levellers - Guest Editors - Day four 8th April 2010
Today it's all about Beautiful Days, the Levellers very own festival held in August. It's the eighth year for the hugely popular festival, we find out what it means for the Levellers and talk to Dave Farrow, part of the Levs management team responsible for the festival.
- Beautiful Days 2010
- Dave Farrow Q&A
Beautiful Days Festival 2010
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Where did the idea come from? How does it stay so successful? The Levellers answer these questions and more
Dave Farrow Q&A
DMF Music
How far back does your involvement with the band go?
I met the band in 1989 in Amsterdam and started working for them in the USA in 1991.
What is your role now?
Live agent for UK and Europe / Beautiful Days organiser, programmer and licensee / part of Levellers management team
When did you get involved with beautiful days?
From the beginning – this is the eighth year we’ve run the festival.
How hard was it to get a festival like that off the ground?
We were refused a license the first year but through more planning and a change of location we were up and running the following year. It was a risk to do something like this but we knew we had the fan-base and the right people to make this happen.
The venue, line up, activities and vibe seem near perfect, that does not happen by chance; how much time goes into the planning of each years event, and how many people are involved.
I start working on the following year during the festival itself - I usually walk or drive around with my site manager looking at how things have worked around site and making plans for improvements there and then - any changes to the festival are normally decided during the event or very quickly afterwards.
I start thinking about line-up in October and start approaching bands in Nov and Dec but I book most bands in January and February. Only Laura (my partner), Steve (accounts) and myself work on the festival year round, then comes Ben who is Site Manager who starts work on the event in January. As the year goes on more and more people come on board - Health & Safety, Box Office, Concessions Managers, Traffic Managers, Solicitors, Security, Stewards, Production Admin, etc, etc. By the time we get to the Festival I would say that we have at least 1,000 people working on the event.
There is a lot of sculpture and art installations around the site, is that a regular bunch of artists that you work with?
Our site art coordinators Becky & Juan organise this for us. I give them a budget and we discuss ideas and then they bring in the artists and companies to make it happen - some people come in year after year but we also like to bring in fresh ideas and concepts each year.
Do you get to enjoy the festival or is 24 hr a day hard work?
A few brief moments……..I spend most of the festival in my porta cabin.
Getting back to the band, how important is touring today?
Bands should tour when they have an album to promote but I also think bands come together as an entity when they are on the road so it is important to tour.
Could the band survive without doing it?
I think the band could survive financially just doing festivals but spiritually they need to play to people all over this country and elsewhere - they love the touring experience.
What european countries are the Lev's most popular in, has that always been the case?
Belgium, Sweden, Holland, Czech, Germany, Norway and Denmark are good territories for the band. This has been a constant for them for many years, but we have played in Greece, Hungary and Portugal recently and had a great reception. We are doing some work in Spain this year and I hope to do some more stuff in Italy and Poland as well. Would love to get the band into Russia and Australia at some point as well!
If you didn't do this job, what would you be doing?
I have a love for history so probably something to do with that.
