Dispatches from a music festival: Beyond the Pale

We're in the thick of festival season now

Packing to exit Beyond the Pale

Apologies for the double email today, but hopefully you aren’t bored to tears of my ever-consistent content. Today is Wednesday, and I am barely recovered from Beyond the Pale, which I attended for two full-throttle nights.

I was always doing two nights, as I was working in Dublin on Friday night, and the buckets and buckets of rain made me nervous for what this field in Glendalough had in store for me. I was very close to not going on the Saturday morning, partly because of the rain but mostly because I was working until 4am and I was tired, but by the time I ate two meals and felt more confident that the monsoon was coming to an end, I hit the road and joined my pals.

The rain was brutal that weekend. Poor old Body & Soul had to pause their festival for a stint due to thunder and lightning, but BTP managed to avoid any further downpours until 1am Monday morning, when we were already tucked up in bed. Our middle age was showing and we have no shame in that.

As my first camping festival of the season, it was a clear reminder that Irish music festivals have not mastered the art of access. Each festival is making improvements, year by year, but I cannot say who’s the best, because there isn’t any Irish festival to use as a stellar example. Yet.

While I had loads of fun at Beyond the Pale, so much that my voice is still gone and the idea of being in the company of others still feels overbearing, their access facilities were less than what they should have been, and I’d like to use this week’s newsletter as a reminder to all festivals to do better.