I've been at the Big Session for the last two years, but I feel that it's time to renew my acquaintance with the MFAB Festival in 2009.

To this end can you please post the dates for 2009, because I can't work out whether the festival will start on the 12th or 19th June next year. 

Ta
Dunc

In response to the request for feed back, here are my comments on MFAB 2008.

In short it was brilliant and the organisers did an excellent job in pulling together such a superb festival.

The highlight for me (and I am sure many others too) was the Church Fitters, Amazing. Friday night was a difficult choice- June Tabor singing in a church, bound to be good, or the Church Fitters, a band I had never heard of singing in a tent. We went with the Church Fitters and they were brilliant. It was a pity however that there were so many empty seats in the Marquee. It didn’t have the atmosphere it could have done if it had been fully attended.  The band deserved a bigger audience I don’t know if the numbers were down this year or if it was because there were three major venues rather than two.

One of the main reasons that I think the Middlewich festival is so good is that along with the big names and, the safe acts that you know are going to be so good, there is the opportunity to see different bands and performers who may be brilliant, or you may not like at all. I didn’t much like the Warsaw Village Band, probably too far removed from the sort of music I am familiar with, but I would rather go to performances which turn out not to be to my liking, rather than just sticking with the familiar and predictable.

I wonder if this year there were too many venues for the size of the audience. There were singers performing in the Church on Saturday afternoon with hardly anyone listening which really was a shame, the performance I listened to was good. I don’t know that if MFAB were a bigger festival that it would be a better festival. Size is important but it’s important to be the right size. Bigger ain’t necessarily better.  The other reason we like MFAB is the atmosphere. With the boats, the parade the dancing and activities all around the town, it feels like you are part of a annual traditional community event rather just attending a music festival. This perception may be entirely illusory but it is attractive non-the-less.

I didn’t post comments earlier as I wanted to wait until after Brampton Live which I went to last weekend. That was a great festival with many big name performers, many of whom we had previously seen at MFAB. To be able to pull in the big name performers whilst retaining its unique atmosphere is a great achievement.

I missed seeing June Tabor at MFAB because we wanted to see the Church Fitters, I would also have liked to have seen the Band from County Hell but you can only see one band at a time. Were they any good,  ?

Now that most of the pubs have introduced a more limited menu over the MFAB weekend, it's getting harder to find a place to eat that caters for a "mixed" group (i.e. some veggie, some not).

We managed at lunchtimes with the help of the pizza-oven, but suggestions for evenings would be useful - where did *you* find to eat (on a budget!) in the evenings?

Thanks Lizzie - I'm sure you're right.

This was my fourth successive visit to MFAB, and it was another great one. It's a pity the lunchtime fringe events don't start a little earlier (i.e. they coincide with the start of the afternoon concerts), but hey, you can't have everything.

There isn't a dance@ mailbox Liz — (James) Paterson's email to Ray arrived in the webmaster mailbox!

James, please resend to ray AT d247mb DOT org — thanks.

General note: it's also a good idea not to publicly post a correctly formatted email address in a forum — better to obfuscate it like my example of Ray's address.

contact dance@247m.biz to speak to Ray Archer, he organises our dance sides.

Pictures
This was my first time at the festival - thought it was great..
Not sure how to upload these, but here are a few from the 2008 festival..
Also - does anyone have a e-mail for the Clerical error group? Tried to send some more pictures to them but the e-mail on their website didnt work!
Thanks

Possibly Eliza P, you need to contact Andy Callen who organised the FUEL BAR to be with us on Sunday. YOu can find him on MYSPACE. Liz

I strolled into the Cheshire Cheese on Sunday evening, before going to queue at the main marquee. It was about 19:30.
There was a singer/songwriter sat performing in the back garden, accompanying herself on a guitar; I heard two numbers, one a parody of "Knights in White Satin" called "White Satin Nightie", the other an innuendo-ridden ditty about telephone sex lines.
I know I missed more, and would like to hear more, but I can't trace the lass via the Fringe lists I've seen. Can anyone help out?

Photographs of the 2008 Festival are now available to VIEW on my Photobox Gallery Page.

PHOTOGRAPHS are FREE (plus P and P) to anyone that wishes to have a Photo Print ( 6x 4 ) of their visit.

NO RUSH !! Photo requests will be collated during JUNE, and posted out in 1st week JULY.

Please make sure you provide a full postal address for delivery.

Contact by e-mail :- cliff.astles@amita.uk.net

If required for commercial use, the photo jpeg can be provided !!

To view :-    www.Photoboxgallery.com/arisam-photo