spudthemariner

Lots for good stuff across the 'main stages', especially in the 'smaller print',and in the Convoy. More than happy with it. Not been since 2019 (for various reasons) and its clearly a more '6 Music' focused vibe lineup wise. Not a massive issue for me however, as I'm the definition of a '6 Music Dad'...🤣. Should be a good weekend.

Initially I thought Islands, but I guess it could easily be either Amyl or DJr.... I mean lets me honest, they thought that Interpol were big enough, and its been well reported how that panned out...

Yeah, pretty much my thoughts. Consistently, I've always found the undercard to be more of a draw than the headliners to be fair (although Janes is a massive one for us). Be interesting to see the rest of the lineup develops...

Aye, fair play...

From the newsletter (on the website).... 'HEADLINE PERFORMANCES FROM: JANE’S ADDICTION (UK FESTIVAL EXCLUSIVE), AMYL AND THE SNIFFERS, FUTURE ISLANDS, SLEAFORD MODS, ORBITAL AND DINOSAUR JR. (UK EXCLUSIVE SHOW)!' Also... 'main stage headliners, Orbital,' So not sure what the confusion is to be fair. Apart from the (imo unlikely) event that one of the announced are the Thursday 'headliner' , Outside of the Convoy, new dance tent etc, that's your lot headliner wise as far as I'm concerned (Pallet and Meadow anyway). As for the 'poster', I think that folks are reading far too much into the order that acts are listed...its just not a very good graphic!

Well yesterdays lineup drop was a definite win for us, and tickets bought last night! But yeah, looking at the last few line-ups, I've also noticed that. Clearly DHP are taking it in a slightly different direction... Due to a whole bunch of reasons, I've not personally not been since 2019...so it should be interesting to see what else has changed, and how it affects the vibe etc...(although fair play, loads of mates were very complimentary about this years do). Hopefully 'Janes' will show up (and play). Loved them for years, but never managed to see them...that said, there is loads for us even if they 'no-show'!

I note with interest that Magical Sounds are no longer running the Dance Tent, due to DHP wanting to provide from in house. Not a stage that I regularly ventured into to be fair, but its certainly upset a few folks. It'll be interesting to see how the replacement measures up. Hopefully not an indicator of future wholesale changes...hmm...

Aye, a complete shitshow all round. No automatic refunds, but depending on your bank, most are able to get their money back (you obviously need to contact them and raise a charge back / dispute). Looking like we'll get ours back so at least all is not lost. Aside from dodgy buisness practice, it does raise the question as to why no one is able to to keep a family friendly mid-sized festival in Scotland. In the last few years, we've lost Electric Fields, Loopalu, and a bit further back Wickerman (not to mention RockNess). There would seem to be a demand (I think), but for whatever reason.... A real shame, as it was a cool wee festi. And if not for the utter C@ck W@mbles that ran it, could have become a serious contender...meh!

Cheers for the link. We didn't go this year for a whole variety of reasons, but almost certainly will next year based on all the positive reactions. A bunch of pals who we've been going with for years have all said how great it was, which is great to hear. Done the survey and also stressed the Alcohol policy as a big plus point. As per many comments, while we also don't take the piss on this (assuming that the bars are well stocked and reasonably priced), the loss of this would signal a fundamental change in the direction of the festival and would likely see many regulars think twice at the very least. Requested IDLES, Garbage and Self Esteem (saw her on a sold out Monday night show in the Barras this year, absolutely astonishing live)!

Interesting and depressing all at the same time... We bought tickets having been previously (pre-pandemic) and before we became aware of the event's 'difficulties'. We've kept the weekend clear in the hope that the event goes forward, although with a healthy degree of skepticism, and have noted the agree of adverts on the various social media platforms. Essentially we suspect that the ticket sales are not exactly flying (despite a decent lineup announcement). We also spoke to a number of traders at Knockengorroch the other week (fantastic weekend by the way). Many have booked pitches and scheduled time out of their calendars for the event...most also prior to hearing about, or at least the full extent of, the financial difficulties. All of which, (assuming that the event even goes ahead of course), puts us as ticket holders in an awkward position. Do we not attend as a matter of principle, and deny artists / traders past and present any chance of earnings / recouping losses. Or, do we attend, potentially only to help to line the organisers pockets, with no eventually of those out of pocket to recoup...? Hmm..... From reading the above, I'm thinking its more and more likely that the event will be cancelled anyway (as is our suspicion in any case), but even so....

Fairly comprehensive statement from the organizers (from the Facebook page)! Seems to have gone down well with most... STATEMENT Now that the 2023 line up has been revealed, we would like to take this opportunity to address directly some of the issues, ongoing challenges and proposed solutions surrounding the very much-loved festival Doune the Rabbit Hole. In particular, the last event in 2022. This statement will fully disclose our current situation and offers an opportunity to help support us in our journey to recovery. We have also been made aware of a lot of misinformation, unfounded allegations and rumours floating around regarding last year's event. We would like to set the record straight in the interests of transparency for anyone who may be hearing unfounded claims or to anyone who has been unknowingly repeating them. DOES DOUNE THE RABBIT HOLE OWE SOME ARTISTS/SUPPLIERS/CREW MONEY? It is true that the event made a loss last year and it is also true that some artists, suppliers and crew have yet to be paid in full. DTRH is doing everything it can to clear any outstanding bills and apologise wholeheartedly for the inconvenience the delays have caused to the people affected. It is worth pointing out, however, that last year Doune paid (figures are approximate) £375,000 to artists, £192,000 to crew and £720,000 to suppliers and we still intend to repay those who have outstanding amounts, so to say no artists or crew got paid is demonstrably untrue on massive scale. Recently, DTRH proposed a plan to BECTU and the Musicians Union to make repayments to anyone affected as well as a vow to pay any artists and crew in advance of this year's festival. WHY DID YOU LOSE MONEY IN 2022? Having been forced to postpone the festival in 2020, and then again at the very last minute in 2021, the 2022 edition was already financially challenging. After lobbying the Scottish government intensely for support to no avail (for and alongside the entire sector utilising official channels with government ministers and campaign groups), DTRH attempted to chase insurmountable losses by increasing the scale of the event and majorly enhancing the programme with the hopes of increased footfall. Previous experience From DTRH shows that around 20% of customers pay on the door over the weekend and don't purchase in advance, a further 20% of the audience purchase online two weeks before the event and a further 20% purchase four weeks before that. So that's historically, 60% of Festival goers in the last 6 weeks and 40% in the last 4 weeks before an event. That has been the case for every single year of the event, with the exception of 2017 when there was a disastrous weather forecast for the weekend. Despite a great weather forecast in 2022, it turned out that this was not an ordinary year and sales expectations evolved in a very different way. This was the first year of the event's return since the pandemic and the first year since Brexit. Both of those issues, combined with the wildly increasing cost of fuel, gas and electricity and the impact of the cost of living crisis hitting people hard in July last year meant that DTRH only sold about 5% of its tickets in the last six weeks, 10% in the last 4, and virtually nothing on the gate at all while facing huge cost increases of its own. This meant that around 40% of all DTRH's bills could not be paid. On a total event budget of £2.8m, that means the event was down more than £1.1m and because this happened so close to the event, there was very little that could be done about it. DTRH is not a corporate event with deep pockets, it is an independent, grassroots festival. However, through the personal funds of the event's owner, as well as their friends and family's support, DTRH was able to reduce that to just over £800k. So the owner of the event lost more than £300k on DTRH. On a personal level, that included the entire life savings of two people - one person's entire pension and retirement fund, and a family’s deposit for a house. There is nothing less true to say than that these people took money from the event, are behaving like a corporation, or holding back any money from people who are owed it. That is the most malicious and hurtful piece of speculation we have seen. The owner of the event is poorer as a result of this situation, as well as horrified and ashamed. This is a community festival, not a commercial festival. The aim is not to make money. The owner and frankly, guardian angel of the event over the years, has never taken one penny out as dividend, fee, salary, or expenses etc, and has put in a large six figure sum to keep it going. This speculation has no constructive basis and is utterly devastating for those who have already lost so much yet continue to work tirelessly to resolve the situation in every possible way. After realising the event owed £800k+, DTRH could have shut down meaning nobody owed money would get paid. Instead, it has been agreed to continue running the event meaning debts can be paid off based on any future profits from the event over a number of years. This is clearly not an ideal situation, and this is not what anybody wanted as their first choice, but DTRH has tried every possible angle to find a solution that would mean the event could pay people back sooner. This was a loss so significant the festival was nearly gone forever. Should DTRH not run as planned in 2023, any ability for anyone to get any of the money they are owed is lost. The only solution is to keep this much loved festival going and pay people back from future profits. We acknowledge that repayments will be on a very late basis, for which we are obviously incredibly sorry, but by working together constructively we can secure the best route to resolution. All festivals, gig venues and nightclubs are under threat and face uniquely challenging circumstances in the post pandemic and post Brexit environment - and we all need your help - now more than ever. Like all festivals, DTRH is bound to have it's critics, but they are outnumbered by the love and support of thousands who come along every year and enjoy the brilliant artists that we book, who of course deserve proper payment. The number of performers and crew who are up for getting involved this year has been a joy to behold and part of the reason that we never gave up. Please remember that a random person leaving a negative comment on social media does not speak for the thousands of artists, crew members and festival-goers who have grown to love the festival and helped build it over the years. ARE YOU BLOCKING PEOPLE OR DELETING COMMENTS? The fact is that many of the allegations DTRH is facing require detailed, considered responses. Where the event's detractors can, without any fear of consequence, basically accuse us of whatever they want without needing to evidence it at any time of day or night, putting undue pressure on our small team. There has been a string of false accusations that range from bad information to trolling for the sake of it. Sometimes these claims are made from people in good faith who are repeating something they read or heard. If anyone has any genuine questions then please feel free to message the page or email us, but the comments thread will no longer be a place to derail the 2023 event which we are working hard to create in some incredibly challenging circumstances as it is, without replying to people who have no connection to the event and nothing but ill-will to spread. Every creditor has been contacted directly, if you are a creditor and feel like you haven't been kept in the loop sufficiently then please contact us directly. Our mission is to pay our debts and sustain a much loved music festival, because we believe such things should exist, even if they are very challenging and expensive things to bring to fruition, and sustaining a festival means selling tickets. It is already public knowledge that the 2022 event did not break even and that this resulted in a proportion of artists, suppliers and crew not being paid. In the events sector this is sadly not an unprecedented scenario. However, whilst many companies would take full advantage of their limited liability and simply walk away, we have pledged to sustain the event and pay future proceeds so that everyone can receive what they are owed. And we hope you agree that late is better than never. Given our priorities we are sure you can understand our motivations for utilising our social media accounts to best effect at this time. DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH PLAYGROUND FESTIVAL? This one is easy. DTRH has never had any association whatsoever with Playground festival. HAVE PUBLIC FUNDS FROM CREATIVE SCOTLAND / EVENT SCOTLAND BEEN STOLEN OR MISUSED? All of the funding from these organisations reached its intended recipients, including disabled artists, crew and suppliers. It is important to understand that DTRH received a relatively small amount of funding from Creative Scotland and Event Scotland towards delivering the festival. Considering the size and scale of the event, its cultural and wider economic impact, and the fact that both funding organisations were entirely aware of the challenges DTRH faced financially going into the event, we refute all and any implied criticism of the management of these funds. IN CLOSING We have released this information in good faith and in the interests of dispelling misinformation and negativity surrounding our actions to date. We hope that by stating our case to you so clearly that you will now be better placed to reach your own positive conclusions and understand and support our tireless efforts to resolve outstanding issues and build stronger foundations for the festival to sustain it well into the future. We are genuinely excited to be back for 2023, and very much look forward to welcoming our fantastic audiences and artists back to celebrate some more of the very best of performances and activities in the summer of 2023. We hope to help create a raft of wonderful new memories for all those who haven’t yet tasted the DTRH magic – and build fresh and lasting memories for our loyal and brilliant existing audience base – here’s to a fantastic DTRH 2023! Join us in the scenic Cardross estate this July alongside Spiritualized, Thurston Moore Group, Alabama 3, Black Grape, Asian Dub Foundation, Steve Mason, The Langan Band, Ross Ainslie & Ali Hutton Trio, Goldie Lookin Chain & many more by clicking here : http://dounetherabbithole.co.uk/tickets

Assuming that it goes ahead, its a really decent start that ticks a lot of boxes for me. They are scaling it back to 5K, so they won't have te pulling power of (what the hoped to attract) last year. They just need to start shiftig tickets now....

Saw that last night. I assumed that they'd have to scale back in order to move forward (and I'm not against the idea). The way that they (tried) to go up a level, is reminiscent of how Electric Fields went under a few years back... They (DTRH) really need to sort their coms out though. A formal public announcement on the plans would (imo) be far more effective than deleting folks comments on social media.... Hopefully the recovery plan works , they are able to pay those out of pocket, and the festival continues, as it was a really great event (if a little ramshackle at times). We shall see...

It'll be very interesting to see who (and what caliber of artist) will sign up to appearing. It was reported that the Musicians Union has had a meeting with the organizers, and have advised all artists to contact them (the MU) first, with a view to obtaining non-refundable deposits etc... There is also a question of whether the event will get a license from the council (they only scraped it last year by all accounts....) We've got tickets, so we've kept the weekend free...we shall see I guess...

Certainly been an interesting 24 hours.... Obviously, we don't want the festival to fail, but quite a few folks are apparently out of pocket, so I'm not sure how I feel about things at it stands...that said, we paid upfront months ago, so regardless we've got to sit and wait. They clearly went all out this year (lineup wise etc) in an effort to boom or bust....and well, bust...hmm....