“My Dad’s Bigger Than Your Dad” Festival, Old Town Gardens, Swindon July 20th 2024

by Ian and Paul Diddams
photos by Ian Diddams and MDBTYD Festival

The 4th iteration of MDBTYD Festival was held on Saturday at its home of homes, Swindon Town Gardens. Last year Devizine covered the proceedings with Darren venturing northwards, and his thoughts and explanations can be found here

My Dad’s Festival overcomes the rain and raises nearly £9,000 for Prospect Hospice

You can find all the background to the festival in Darren’s post, but I can add that this year in 2024 over £8000 will have been raised as I write this with other monies still coming in – in that vein it’s not too late to donate! Just follow the link here.

If you CBA to read Darren’s 2023 post, a summary is that the MDBTYD Festival seeks to raise funds for Prospect Hospice in honour and recognition of Dave Young, a mover and shaker in the Swindon music scene before his passing in 2021. This is generously aided by the primary sponsorship of “Future Planning” Independent Financial Planners as well as support from Jovie Grill, Funky Corner Radio, Swindon PA Hire, Jamaican Me Crazy, The Tuppeny, Holmes Music, Vibish Brewery, SPR Garage, The Castle, South Swindon Parish Council, C.P. Jeffries, LF, Mamas Events, T Marshall Services, Originzone, Scarrots fun fairs, Hills and Platinum Security services.

While not totally perfect, nonetheless the weather this year was better than last year’s it has to be said although that bar was pretty low! Nine hundred souls joined in the fun in Old Town Gardens, and as in previous years enjoyed acts both in the festival arena on the main stage but also in the Acoustic stage in the band stand in the main park, as well as the craft market and fair ground. In fact it must be said so incessant was the music offerings in the main arena that these correspondents hardly managed to get to the Acoustic stage but that is no slight on the acts there – and if “Plummie Racket” was anything to go by when we did manage to squeeze a couple of numbers in the quality was high! For future reference to the great Devizine readership, the acoustic stage, craft market and fairground is open to the public though Im sure anybody availing themselves of the “free” offerings would be chucking a suitable donation in a bucket online of course.

So – the main arena. What a cornucopia of delights! All Swindon/Wiltshire based bands with local followings and the standard started high and maintained itself throughout. Without going into glorious technicolour detail across the board (else we’d be here until Christmas writing and reading it all) our musical pleasure zones were in turn tickled by “Copper Creek” with Americana style folk to start the toes a-tapping, “Broken Daylight” & “JB and The Mojo Makers” each with their own brand of driving rock and blues, and then “I See Orange” – a quite excellent Grunge, hard edged band with on stage attitude par excellence… sporting a bright orange bass… what came first the band name or the bass we wondered?! “Thud” blew us away with more driving bluesy rock and were followed by the stunningly vocalled “Joli & The Souls”.
And lets not forget the “surprise” visits from “Ministry of Samba” !!

Eventually as evening began the crowd got what many were here to see – “The Chaos Brothers” an eclectic mix of punk, glam and new wave covers from Calne and Dave Young’s last band. And thence to the total treat of “Gaz Brookfield and The Company of Thieves”. Gaz is well known in these parts as a solo performer, but he has appeared for quite some while periodically with a bunch of assorted ne’er do wells “The Company of Thieves” and its becoming more common I have noticed of late for the full band experience to occur. But whether solo or a-Company-d (see what I did there?) Gaz’s tunes are a roller coaster of emotions from poignant, to laugh aloud, to reflective, to angry. He – and the Thieves – never disappoint.

Sadly our carriage awaited to return us to the depths of the county and Devizes so we missed SN Dubstation but their reputation precedes them and I have no doubt they were their spectacularly entertaining selves 🙂

Now of course festivals are so much more than the bands of course. There is one area that is on the lips of seemingly every festival goer to every festival I discuss … the LOOS! Well, the loos were sparklingly clean, delightfully fresh on the nostrils and plentiful – I never had to queue all day! The bar – another important aspect of festival days of course – did have queues but that is testimony to the excellence of the products available and it is always lovely to spend time chatting to other attendees. On a personal note, we both felt the beer offering was absolutely spot on … a Vibish pale ale with a hint of Melon (a nod to Dave Young’s quote that he didn’t want his beer to taste of melon!). The bar was provisioned by “The Tuppeny” with some proceeds going to Prospect Hospice too. That of course just leaves – the food! The usual popular array of burgers, hot dogs, and hog roast – and chips! – from “Jovie Grill”, but another personal hats off to “Jamaican Me Crazy” for their fantastic Caribbean food … curry goat, jerked chicken, rice and peas etc. etc. etc. Simply great!

And so the day came to an end. It had flown by – a tribute to the high standard of acts and the enjoyment of the day. MDBTYD 2025 planning is already under way and it is sure to be even better if that is possible than this year’s.

See ya there ?

https://www.mydadsbiggerthanyourdad.co.uk/

And for more musical splendiferousness in the same vein for Prospect Hospice is the upcoming “The Shuffle” – Swindon’s biggest festival of unsigned grassroots music, 12th-15th September!