Homegame Preview

Fife. Not a 'shire' but a kingdom.

And the ruler of this independent state (of mind)? King Creosote. The boss of Fence Records, the Scottish singer has risen in prominence in recent years yet comes home to Anstruther every year to host Homegame.

A tiny festival situated in the quaint Scottish village, Homegame turns virtually every hall into a music venue. Last year the likes of KT Tunstall, James Yorkston, Alasdair Roberts and more gathered for the biggest Homegame yet.

Stripping things back this year, festival organiser Johnny Lynch aka The Pictish Trail assured ClashMusic that Homegame would still be marked by a number of special performances.

One glance at the bill confirms that he isn't joking. Four Tet, Pantha Du Prince, King Creosote and Pictish Trail / Adem project Silver Columns are amongst the highlights as Anstruther is turned into a hive of activity.

Homegame takes place between March 12th - 14th. ClashMusic caught up with The Pictish Trail to talk about folk, rock and fish 'n' chips...

So how did Homegame begin?
We began in 2004 and it was a lot smaller then – I think we only sold about one hundred tickets, and we only sold out on the day. It was over two days in one hall. Since then it’s got a lot bigger, although we decided to make things a little smaller this year just to keep it real.

Where did the impetus to have your own festival come from?
We’d been speaking about it for a while. Fence used to do these things called Sunday Socials, which we all day events which took place in Aikman’s Pub in St. Andrews. Fence has always been a label where lots of people would make different music under different names, so there was always many different acts. It grew out of that really. We just thought “oh it would be great to see everyone who used our messageboard ”and just hang out. At that point it was only one hundred people but it was really good.

It always seems like a family re-union!
Almost. In a strange kind of way it feels like getting a report card, as if its parent’s night! It’s just amazing to see all these different acts, and some of them are fans of each other’s music. It’s very much a social thing, which can put some people off if they’re not part of the in crowd. There’s a danger that it comes across as a bit of a clique. But it’s a great chance to catch up, find out what people are doing. For us, it’s a great showcase for the label and a good opportunity to invite pals up. It’s a really shambolic festival to be honest – festival probably isn’t the right word for it. It doesn’t really do justice to the word festival.

King Creosote is playing seven times this year - how will this work?
Well he did this live album last year at our Halloween thing. He wanted to keep it at small as possible. Then he decided to do it at Homegame, but play to only forty people. I was like “Kenny if you go to Homegame the plan won’t work for everyone coming up!” So now he’s doing it seven times, so each ticket holder will be able to catch the show. There’ll be some surprises, so each show will be slightly different. The way it’s going to be done will be really special and is the sort of thing you can’t really get at any other event. I suppose it’s the sort of thing that keep people coming back to Homegame.

Four Tet playing in Anstruther Town Hall came as a bit of a surprise.
. The funny thing with Four Tet is that he’s definitely one of the bigger names playing the festival and with that comes bigger requirements. I’ve had emails from label people asking about Four Tet’s technical rider and catering. I was like “actually… Kieran will know this, but we’re not actually that type of event so we’re not supplying any of that!” I’m really looking forward to seeing him, he’s amazing live.

There's always a lot of smaller events going on, have you made any plans for these?
For folk who’ve missed out on Homegame tickets we’ll have two or three bars open with different songwriters from the Fence Collective including Kenny (King Creosote), James (Yorkston) and myself. We’ve got a lot of acoustic stuff planned, then other bands playing to open things up to the community. It’s aimed at folk who couldn’t get tickets or maybe just don’t want to take part in the whole Fence thing.

We kind of decided after last year that we wanted to make it a little smaller, as it turned out to be something a lot more stressful than we had intended. Last year we had two main halls open at the same time in order to accommodate everyone, but with that we also lost the feeling of everyone coming together to experience one thing. We wanted to put that back into Homegame, so we’ve got different halls open during the day but then we’ll have Anstruther Town Hall as our main arena.

Fence Records have kindly given ClashMusic four tracks from artists on their roster. A free download bundle, grab it HERE!

Tracklisting:

François & The Atlas Moutains - 'Friends'
Rozi Plain - 'Barbs & Velcro'
OLO Worms - 'Elastic Waste Band (Low Fat Cut)
FOUND - Freaky Freaky Chancer