The Sheffield Adventure Film Festival (ShAFF) has now matured into its 6th successive year and was the biggest and most diverse yet. Set over the weekend of 4-6th March under the careful management of Heason Events, ShAFF has managed to gain the respect of the festival circuit in a relatively short space of time with 100% of those attending in 2010 asked if they would attend again in 2011 stating they definitely would.
This years event saw event organiser Matt Heason, again adapting very much a team approach via a dedicated band of ‘Heason Events Volunteers’ who were easily recognisable by their ShAFF t-shirts, who toiled away all weekend to create a truly memorable weekend.
Shaff’s films are its staple diet of exciting adventure features showcased in high definition, for a taster of these and more events go to http://www.shaff.co.uk/ to watch the trailer and get the low down.
For the second year running, we had organised live music throughout the weekend and I had volunteered, yet again to organise this. By luck or design, the sets to be played out in the main bar of Sheffield’s Showroom, were timed for audiences before and after the films and speakers (in the end it turned out to be more luck than anything else).
Sheffield, historically, is a musical city, so it shouldn’t have been too hard to track down some acts, who hopefully would play for beer tokens (literally) and a bit of free publicity and after a trawl of local gigs and pubs, we finalised a line up with just days to spare.
Friday kicked off with Velvet Rose, (http://www.myspace.com/velvetrosemusic) Tim on piano and flame-haired Rachel Edmondson on sax/vocals. I timed them starting at 7:20pm and finishing at 8:50pm, playing continuously without stopping! Second on the bill was Showroom local outfit, John T Angle & The Spirit Levels (http://www.myspace.com/johntangleandthespiritlevels) singing about dragons, devils and Greek gods (pictured above).
Closing the set was singer songwriter, Lucy Spraggen, (http://www.myspace.com/lucyspragganmusic) who has toured across the United States, skimming the Mexico borders and California, playing gigs in almost all of the 50 states over a three-month tour. Now Lucy is back home for an explosive summer on the British festival scene with gigs already confirmed.
Saturday afternoon began with an energetic, Open Acoustic Jam Session featuring Liam Walsh, The Felt Tips and myself.
Liam (http://www.myspace.com/walshacoustics) then did a sterling job of playing most of the afternoon away to a packed Showroom bar. Liam is 16 years old and has been playing ukulele, guitar and drums (and also vocals) for 2 years. Liam says, “I play very diverse genres of music which include Reggae, punk, Ska, and everything between really. All in all I'm a growing young man baking with inspiration and the drive to take on any challenge or event in life, and tackle it head on, and just generally enjoy and love music and life.”
Saturday evening kicked off with duo Sophie & Mel from The Felt Tips, (http://www.myspace.com/thefelttips/photos) who played a lively set, before solo guitarist Carl Watkins (http://www.reverbnation.com/carlonfirewatkins) took over, playing a tight set of Electric Blues from Hendrix to Walters.
Local band The Felt Tips finished the night, playing a range of music from the 60's to the present day with some of their own compositions thrown in. Following the live music, there were DJ Sets from Nigel Fisher and Fran Guiton, of Secret Society and Ambrose White and Nick Royles from Na Drove.
Sunday began with the upbeat Sophie and Mel, who play reinterpretations of well-known tracks with a bit of attitude, along with their own compositions. An open mike afternoon followed and songs were jammed out before the last set of the weekend, a certain rambling, journeyman guitarist, and the random chap that is; Simon Jacques.
I placed myself at the end of the sets, on the last day for two good reasons. One that hopefully there audiences of ShAFF will be satisfied that they had got their monies worth from the weekend already and therefore wouldn’t mind some out-of-tunery warbling and two, I needed to fill 3 hours on a lazy Sunday afternoon after an unfortunate couple of no-shows…
The problem was that after practising some new songs and jamming / playing all weekend, my fingertips were literally falling off and I needed to keep going until the awards ceremony and the end of the festival. By now we had got the timings of the sets spot on, and we used this experience to play at strategic times when the bar filled up prior to and at the end of the films.
I ended up playing quite a few blues tunes, amongst some Indie favourites until the end of the festival, when mercifully I gave my poor trashed tips relief from the heavy gauge steel strings.
As ever with these things, not everything goes smoothly, however all in all with teamwork, we managed to pull off a successful weekend of live music to compliment the festival and I have to thank all those who helped with the organising and lending of kit. We managed to again provide a diverse range of music for the ShAFF audience and huge thanks has to go to all those who came to play and perform.
They all proved yet again why Sheffield is THE City of Music and we were all again pleasantly surprised of the outstanding quality of all the musicians, they did us proud and many thanks again.
It’s going to be hard to top it all at ShAFF 2012, but we will try…
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