Stornoway to play Towersey Festival

FOLLOWING the announcement that Stornoway are to join Joan Armatrading and Bellowhead at this year’s Towersey Festival (28-31 August 2015), the Oxford band have spoken about their appearance.

Stornoway

“It’s our only Oxford show over the summer and the first time we’ve played the festival,” said main songwriter Brian Briggs. “It’s a bit of a legendary festival, so we’re really excited to get to play it at long last.

“We’re on the same night as Bellowhead, who are, of course, another ‘local act’. We’ve played with them in the past and they are great.

“I’ve never been to Towersey before but I’ve heard about it many times. Hopefully, I’ll take the whole family as we have a couple of toddlers and we hear the festival is really family-friendly. We should have local fans coming and we’ll get some friends down too I’m sure – it’ll be great.”

Stornoway’s appearance follows the release of the band’s third full studio album, Bonxie (out 13 April 2015 via Cooking Vinyl). Named after the great skua (Stercorarius skua), a large powerful seabird also known as the bonxie, the collection features songs inspired by nature and the outdoors.

“Overall, the record’s pop, but in disguise. The songs seem to quite quickly connect with people,” explained Brian.

Debuting in 2010 with the 100,000 selling Beachcomber’s Windowsill, the band – Brian, Jonathan Ouin, Oli Steadman and Rob Steadman – have previously opted to record themselves. However, for Bonxie, the band enlisted the skills of famed producer Gil Norton (Pixies, Foo Fighters, Twin Atlantic).

“We’d got quite used to doing things our way, said Brian. “That’d been good fun. But this time we wanted a step up from our comfort zones and having Gil there made us question our decisions, see things from a fresh perspective. The result is a more simpler, fresher sound, and we wanted to do something less dense, less layered. It’s still poppy … but it in an outdoorsy way.”

Stornoway play Towersey Festival, near Thame, Oxfordshire, on Saturday 29 August 2015, with Bellowhead, John Smith, Phil Beer, Lisbee Stainton and many more. Day Tickets are £40 (adult), £28 (youth), £18 (child), under 5s free. Full Weekend festival tickets are available from £120 (adult), £110 (conc), £84 (youth), £55 (child), with under 5s free. For tickets and more line-up details, call 01629 827016 or see: towerseyfestival.com