Meadowlands Festival Review
Festival Season is a go, and it’s my absolute favourite time of the year, and what a festival to begin with. Meadowlands is a brand new one day festival on the Victoria Embankment insanely close to Nottingham City Centre, and it’s headlined by the sensational, Gerry Cinnamon. Alongside acts such as The Reytons, Black Honey and The Kooks, Meadowlands is on track to make one hell of a debut.
Obviously, with any new festival or event, there are teething problems which we’ll get out of the way first. Firstly, the BBC Music Introducing Stage was a beautiful set-up located on a traditional bandstand closed off from the rest of the festival. Featuring a great line-up of local talent, there was simply no signage to it anywhere except where it was meaning that many of the wonderful acts including The Rosadocs and Michael Aldag ended up performing to smaller crowds than they deserved.
Other than that, it felt like there could have been more done to promote the festival in the run-up but with crowd numbers on the day hitting 20,000, it was a fantastic turnout for the first ever Meadowlands festival. The festival did suffer from some obvious sound issues during the day, something most hardcore festival-goers will be accustomed to experiencing. That being said the production during the headliner set was wonderfully effective and certainly showed ambition from the organisers. Aside from that, the main stage set-ups were brilliant and accessibility facilities for the disabled were spot on although organisers do need to look at more varied options for vegans.
The site as a whole has some nice details, with flags all around, I particularly liked the hay straw bale seating that they had across the festival so that people could sit down and enjoy acts, I just wish there were more of them. The main stage looked particularly cool, as did the second stage, and I loved how everything was close to each other and that the whole ground felt accessible to those who struggle to get around.
Looking across the line-up over the two stages, there was plenty to keep fans entertained throughout the day. Spread over two stages, how can you argue with a bill that includes the brilliant quirky pop of Zuzu from Liverpool, rowdy indie from Merseyside in the form of Rats and Yorkshire courtesy of rising indie favourites The Reytons all topped off by a second stage headliner of the quality of Dylan John Thomas.
Let’s talk about the big artist highlights, and despite me not being able to see a lot of bands due to me working backstage a lot of the day, I was able to find some great performances, such as Black Honey on the main stage, where frontwoman, Izzy Bee Phillips’ vocals were out of this world and the whole band was just wonderful in regards to their artistry and stage presence.
The Kooks provided us with hit after hit with a carefully curated setlist too, and Marty on the BBC Music Introducing Stage was fantastic (big things are coming for them!), but the highlight for me was headliner, Gerry Cinnamon, who provided us with some amazing vocals, production, stage presence and everything else. It was an impressive headline performance.
Overall, Meadowlands is certainly big in ambition and if given a bigger location and more promotion deserves to attract headliners worthy of a sell-out. Once those teething problems are ironed out, Meadowlands showed that it can become big competition for Nottingham’s Splendour Festival, becoming a name that live music and festival fans will soon look for on the Summer calendar.
