Putting on an outdoor music festival in Ireland: ‘The bands saw they weren't going to be up on the back of a truck in Portlaoise'

Irish Times

2 days ago

When Philip Meagher, a solicitor and indie-rock fan, set out to create a
music
festival from scratch, he knew he had a lot to prove.
He had no experience organising a big event featuring dozens of acts over multiple days – on a brand new festival site. But he was passionate about music and believed there was space in an already crowded calendar for something different.
And so was born
Forest Fest
, a three-day event at Emo village, in Co Laois, that's laser-focused on concertgoers of a particular vintage.
'We were trying to fill a niche. We thought there was a market for a festival primarily focused on a more mature audience. And while we didn't want to go completely retro, we certainly wanted a nod towards artists on the road for a long time.
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'But we were very specific that we were only talking about bands that were still match fit – basically that they were bands that were still gigging actively, were producing new music, that were touring.'
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Meagher launched Forest Fest in 2022 with a largely Irish line-up. It has since expanded to include international acts such as Suede and James. This year's headliners, over the weekend of July 25th to 27th, include
Franz Ferdinand
and
Manic Street Preachers
.
The challenge, says Meagher, was to put together a bill that reflected his vision of the festival as an event that appealed to over-30s yet did not wallow in nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. He didn't want to lean into the hellscape of glorified 1980s karaoke: the idea was to celebrate artists who were still forging ahead creatively rather than dining out on faded glories.
'The first year we were concentrating mostly on Irish acts. The good, big names, like The Stunning, Something Happens, the likes of those,' he says. 'In fairness to them, they were very open to taking a risk on a new festival. Obviously, they were taking a leap into the dark. We had to give certain assurances about the level of production and staging we were going to provide.
'When they saw the production team we had put together, and they saw the specification of the sound system, staging, the lighting, etc, that we were going to put in place … that was of huge comfort to them. They weren't going to turn up and be up on the back of a truck in the square in Portlaoise. That's with the greatest of respect to bands that play on the back of a truck.'
These are challenging times for music festivals. In the UK last year more than 60 festivals were cancelled or postponed, up from 36 in the previous 12 months. In Ireland, where the circuit is obviously a lot smaller, nine such events were nevertheless cancelled last year amid rising overheads in music and ongoing cost-of-living pressures.
Those tensions are felt across the industry. In the case of bigger festivals there is an ever more desperate scramble to secure one of the elite acts seen as having the star power to headline a major outdoor concert – think Lana Del Rey, who played
Glastonbury
in 2023, or Olivia Rodrigo, a headliner in 2025. It's a short list – and everyone wants them.
Elite act: Lana Del Rey at Glastonbury in 2023. Photograph: Joseph Okpako/WireImage
'We're seeing a trend of festivals booking acts earlier.
Primavera Sound
, in Barcelona, announced its line-up in October, and it takes place in June this year, which means negotiations would have started before their last festival even happened,' Finlay Johnson of the
Association for Electronic Music
, a New York-based organisation with member companies in more than 40 countries, said in January.
'Others have followed suit. Partly, they want tickets to be on sale for as long as possible, but they also want to secure headliners, as there are fewer acts available.'
Those headaches do not apply to smaller festivals – at least not in the same way. Still, regardless of scale, an attractive line-up is more important than ever. It can be the difference between a good year and an underwhelming one. If anything, such decisions are even more crucial when it comes to more intimate festivals.
'We need the headliner name on the board to excite people, get a bit of hype going,' says Katie Twohig, who, with her husband, Eoin Hally, programmes the three-stage, 800-capacity
When Next We Meet festival
, at Raheen House in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, which this year takes place on June 7th and 8th.
Headliners: Pillow Queens are at this year's When Next We Meet. Photograph: Debbie Hickey/Getty
The main acts include
Villagers
, Conor O'Brien's thoughtful indie songwriter project, and the postpunks Pillow Queens, alongside the cult alternative artists Paddy Hanna, Skinner and Morgana.
Having a big name is important, and not only in terms of shifting tickets or drawing an audience from outside the locality. They also set the tone for the rest of the bill, Twohig says.
The idea is to attract acts that have a complementary sound. If When Next We Meet booked the noisy Dublin postpunks The Scratch, for example, they'd have to ensure the rest of the day's line-up had a similar sensibility. The goal is to mould the feel of the weekend around those headliners. It all starts with them.
'We're absolutely thrilled where things landed this year. Villagers are the main band closing on Sunday. But also Pillow Queens, on the Saturday night, they'll be headlining. We feel like they're strongest line-up to date, and a lovely balance in terms of genres as well. And Pillow Queens probably have a younger audience, so it's a lovely scope there,' Twohig says.
'Sometimes it's hard to get that balance right. There's no end to the amount of great artists that are out there. When you're curating something, it takes time to get that balance right. Once you book one artist it narrows down your choices, I suppose, in the lower tiers on the programming. We're very happy with how it turned out this year. But some years we've been stressing over about getting the right fit.'
As with so much else in the music industry, putting together a good festival bill is helped by having a solid network of contacts, says Emmet Condon, who promotes live music under the
Homebeat
banner and programmes
Another Love Story
, an intimate festival at the 18th-century Killyon Manor, in Co Meath, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. (This year's festival is on August 23rd and 24th.)
In the music business there are people who get involved because of the romance, and then there are people who are hard-nosed businesspeople. We tend to try and work with or find acts and people who have the same heart that we have about doing it
—
Emmet Condon
Having started in 2014, Another Love Story remains the best-kept secret of the Irish festival year, though it has attracted many high-profile artists. This year the headliners are the Barcelona producer and DJ John Talabot and the Co Wicklow songwriter
Fionn Regan
.
'I have been running shows as Homebeat for 15 or 16 years now. I've been active as a booker and a promoter for a long time. I've worked as a booker for things like Body & Soul,' says Condon, referring to the Westmeath festival last held in 2023. 'Over a span of time you build up contacts, and people trust what you do.'
The bigger acts Another Love Story has attracted, according to Condon, include Talabot and, last year, the German electro supergroup Modeselektor. It has also hosted people like Alabaster DePlume, the acclaimed jazz and spoken-word artist, and the famed fiddler Martin Hayes, 'who would be luminaries in their own right'.
It takes work to reel in these international artists, who may have festival offers from around the world.
'For us to attract them to the smaller stage, we have to work pretty hard to deliver what we do each year. And then to sell the dream of the thing to those people.
'In the music business there are people who almost inevitably get involved because of the romance, and then there are people who are hard-nosed businesspeople,' who want to make money. 'We tend to try and work with or find those acts and those people who have the same heart that we have about doing it.'
With smaller festivals, there are no blockbusting stars to draw the audience. It has to be about something more than that.
'It started as a relatively small thing and has grown into a relatively substantial adventure each year,' Condon says about Another Love Story. 'As it's grown, as a booker, the opportunity has been to increasingly fill the space and create a narrative of sorts through music.
'We're not a massive festival that has massive headline acts, obviously. My favourite thing about the whole thing is the spreadsheet that I get to keep and hone – like my baby – from one September, when one festival ends, and straight over to the next part of the year.
'It's a joy to create a mood piece, using music throughout the whole weekend, and to kind of create an arc of experience and the soundtrack that fits around it.'
In the case of Forest Fest, which has a 12,000-person capacity across three stages, Philip Meagher had a clear vision: a festival that would appeal to those whose wayward youth is well behind them and are perhaps starting to weary of megafestivals. He had worked as a solicitor for the late John Reynolds, the much-respected Irish promoter who established
Electric Picnic
in 2004.
It was being at that festival, which has drifted towards a younger audience over the past 15 years, that made Meagher decide there was a niche for music lovers who had aged out of Stradbally weekend.
'The main acts that we have are obviously of a very, very high standard. They have a huge international standing. The curated bands that would support them would be of a similar quality but wouldn't quite have, perhaps, the international standing that the main acts would have.
'And that would filter down into the other supporting stages, where we would have acts slightly smaller in standing and then supported by the best of up-and-coming Irish and international acts,' he says.
'We have very, very strong new acts coming from the UK, coming from Ireland, coming from the US – giving them a chance. And they're appreciative of the fact that a lot of them are getting their first big festival experience – and playing on the same bill as the likes of the Manics and Travis and Dandy Warhols.
'They're going to meet them all and learn from them and see what it's like to be a rock god for the weekend.'