Good Shoes Festival Diary

Artrocker faves Good Shoes spent last week taking over The Stag’s Head pub in East London, where they staged a three-day festival featuring bands such as Hatcham Social, Fiction, Wild Palms and many more.

The question is: what was going on backstage while the festival madness ensued!? We can now find out, as lead singer Rhys publishes his festival diary exclusively to Artrocker.TV.

As Rhys told us when submitting the text, This is mainly about how I got wasted…”

WEDNESDAY

So the start of the festival had us all meeting in East London at the Stag's Head. The gear had been taken by Tom (sound guy) and our manager from our storage unit so everyone else cycled there: that's the luxury of doing gigs a few miles from our houses!

Hatcham Social (left) played the matinee and both them and Fiction (below) played the evening show. It was a great start, a really good evening show and reasonably busy matinee!

After that we went to the Haggerston on Kingsland Road, which will become a regular theme over the 4 days as you'll find! Back home to bed and the first hangover of the 4 days.



THURSDAY

So a little cycle along the canal and I'm at the venue in time to see Dissapearers who were amazing! One of the best new bands I've seen in ages! The matinee had only sold 1 ticket though so that was a bit crap! The evening show was nice though.

Then we went to the Haggerston again and pretty much had the same evening as Saturday!


FRIDAY

Today Othello Woolf and Wild Palms (left) played. Wild Palms are friends from the November tour and were amazing! Loads of friends were down. Orlando from The Maccabees came down and Mystery Jets were DJing!

Quite predictably we went to the Haggerston after; we met up with Is Tropical there and carnage ensued! I woke up in Gary's flat after drinking some weird Sambucca stuff and don't remember a thing...

SATURDAY

Predictably, today led to another hangover! Went to the football for a friend’s birthday then the Stag's!

The line up for Saturday was amazing: Stricken City, Brute Chorus, Is Tropical, La Shark, Rory Philips DJing, Maximo Park djing… it was all amazing! We all hung out at the Stag's, went to the Haggerston again and ended up in a guy called Greg's house playing table football with Is Tropical until 7 in the morning!

SUNDAY

Will's birthday at the Spurstow and I felt like half the man I did on Wednesday! Think it was worth it though the gigs were amazing and we played to 800 people over 4 days!

Back in April for the UK tour and Dingwalls in Camden! Think it's gonna be good if this was anything to go by!



PHOTOS BY ALEX HOUGH