A NEW DAY FESTIVAL
21st, 22nd and 23rd August 2026
Day 3
ZZ Toppd
Dirty Strangers
Neon Fields
Blue Stragglers
Vince Lee & Sophie Lord
Jump
Karnataka
Henge
Soho Dukes
Gong
日本語で読む
Day 3
The gates at A New Day open at - to quote the programme – “11:30am approx”. I’m there at 11:25am (approx) and take my place in the queue which duly starts moving a few minutes later. I’m there early as I am to meet Julie Wassmer, the author of the Whitstable Pearl mystery books who has had a stand in the merch tent for the last few days, cheerily meeting and greeting anyone who wishes to say hello. Two of her books have just been published in Japanese and the TV series is on the telly’s nationwide AXN mystery channel. We met and chatted yesterday, today she greets me with a big smile and asks me to hang on for a moment while she sets up. A few minutes later, she’s ready.
A chat with Julie Wassmer…
Q: Are you actually from Whitstable?
JW: I'm not from Whitstable. I come from the East End of London. I grew up there in the 50s and 60s.
Q: Within the sound of the Bow Bells?
JW: Yeah. I'm actually a Cockney (smiles) and then much later, of course I went on to write EastEnders.
Q: I didn’t know that…
JW: Yeah, I wrote EastEnders for about almost 20 years for the BBC and other programmes as well. It was only going out twice a week at that time. So, that would be around about the early 90s. It was brilliant. It was a really exciting time to work on.
Q: Dot Cotton and Dirty Den and all that?
JW: Yeah, absolutely. It was really good fun and I really enjoyed working for TV but I always wanted to write crime fiction. I moved to Whitstable with my husband in 1999 and I walked down the little high street there, a seaside town, oyster industry historic smuggling trade and everything and I thought it was just a perfect location for a crime series so I started writing these books, the Whitstable Pearl Mysteries.
Q: How many have you written now?
JW: I've written eleven. The 11th came out in June this year and now they are a TV series so it went full circle. You know, I got out of writing for TV, started writing the books and the books were picked up for TV. There's been three seasons now of the TV series of Whitstable Pearl.
Q: Are you writing the screenplays?
JW: No, I'm not. I'm an executive producer.
Q: Did they get the cast right?
JW: Well, yeah. The TV series is quite different in many ways from the book, as you know. The casting is different because it's been much more racially inclusive. The police detective is actually a biracial actor and that was something that I missed doing in the books because he's a London Metropolitan Police copper and he should have been black or biracial but I didn't do that in the books and I wish that I had. They look different, the cast, but the most important thing is the spirit of the characters and they got that exactly right.
Q: What inspires you, what triggers a new idea for a story?
JW: It's usually the location. One of my books is called Murder at Mount Ephraim and of course we're here now at Mount Ephraim for A New Day Festival. Two of the organisers of the festival, Frank and Angela Smith, they asked me to come along last year and showcase the books, which I did and I've just made all these fabulous relationships with music goers here. I'm an old muso myself because I made a record back in the 80s.
Q: Oh, come on, tell me.
JW: Under the name of Lola Payola. It was a New Wave album. Google it, you'll find it. (smiles) They call it a New Wave classic. I had a boyfriend, he was in a New Wave band called The Sinceros and he was getting out of music and I was trying to get him to stay with it and he said, ‘You think it's so easy? You try.’ So I said, okay, I'll come up with a song. We got a production deal. We recorded it in Nick Lowe's studio in Shepherds Bush and got a deal with CBS Epic. They agreed that I wouldn't have to sing on Top of the Pops. They said the only other band that had got that agreement was The Clash but I couldn't do it because I couldn't really sing. It was a mad record; it's called ‘The Schoolgirl Song’.
Q: Then you said to your boyfriend, “I told you it was easy.”
JW: Yeah! (laughs) Well, we did it. You know, it was a real experience but, you know, I've written songs but at heart, I'm a writer of TV or film drama and books and I really enjoy writing the books now.
Q: Any hints for writers? I have ideas but I quite often get stuck after the first third.
JW: You shouldn't feel that that's something new. Most people get stuck there. When I started writing, I knew that I had a good ear for dialogue and I knew that I could write characters because I love people. Those are two really good points to have if you're going to be a writer but what I didn't have was structure and often when you get stuck in a book or a piece of work, it's because you haven't worked out the structure properly. Now, people make a lot of money giving lectures about structure but it's really just having a good beginning, middle and an end and my advice to everybody is to think of your story in terms of like a sheet that you're pinning onto a clothesline. You've got to get the pegs at this end and at that end and in the middle, which is probably where yours has gone baggy. That's where your sheet starts falling on the floor so get those points. Recognise those points in your story and work towards them all the time, like a scholar.
Q: Got it. Thank you.
JW: And don't give up!
Q: I won’t. Thank you very much for doing this.
JW: Lovely talking to you. Have fun. I'll see you around.
_JPG.jpg)
Julie Wassmer
ZZ Toppd fans
_JPG.jpg)
There are already people waiting to meet Julie and ZZ Toppd are about to get the proceedings underway so I mosey on down to the photo pit and join the guys I’ve come to know over the last couple of days for the first shoot of the day. As you will have guessed, they are a cover band of the ‘tres hombres’ from Texas and before starting, they dedicate the show to Frank Beard, ZZ Top’s drummer who passed away just a few days ago. With fake beards, video backdrops of the hits, spinning furry guitars and sunglasses, these guys are as close as you can now get to seeing the real band. The set is interrupted briefly by a buzz in the P.A. before ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ but is quickly resolved by the crew and doesn’t reappear for the rest of the set nor indeed, the day. They close with ‘La Grange’ and ‘Tush’ and I just had time to get backstage and see them zoom off in their Eliminator Coupe.*
_JPG.jpg)
c.jpg)
ZZ Toppd
“We are Dirty Strangers and we play Rock and Roll” announces Alan Clayton from the stage. They certainly do and are masters of it. From the Punk-fused ‘My Girl’s A Getaway Driver’ to the pure Rock ‘n’ Roll of ‘Get Wild’ and ‘Pirates Don’t Get Pensions’ to the singalong ‘La La La I Couldn’t Care Less’, along with the Stones, they are England’s finest purveyors of the essence of the genre. Seductive stuff, these guys just like playing to one or a thousand people and the crowd was noticeably much bigger three-quarters of the way through their set. Like walking along a street on a Friday night and hearing a party going on, people were attracted to the shindig and just kept coming to join the bash. Forty-eight years they’ve been going, I’d say they’ve got at least another forty-eight left in them.
c.jpg)
c.jpg)
Dirty Strangers
Alan Clayton
A few words with Alan Clayton...
Q: I have to be honest. I’ve been in Japan 25 years so I didn’t know Dirty Strangers were still going…
AC: We've got a new album coming out on September the 11th and we're playing at the 100 Club in London. You around?
Q: No, I'm not. I've got to go back next week. So have you been playing constantly throughout?
AC: What happened is, we had a son who died of cancer so it was about six or seven years where I didn't do anything. We had a break, and then I was living with Keith Richards at the time in Redlands, and he was about to start the Bigger Bang Tour. I said to him, ‘Any chance of coming on tour with you?’ and he said, ‘Well you’d have to work, so I got a job doing backline; two and a half years I went on tour with them. There was little breaks in between and when I come back, I start recording and writing again and we haven't stopped since. We've done, I think, four albums since then. I don't know what the direction is anymore, you've just got to keep doing what you do, haven't you?
Q: Yeah, I love that ‘Pirates Don't Get Pensions’ song.
AC: It's good, isn't it? (grins) ‘My Girl’s A Getaway Driver’ as well, that's a good one. They're on Hunter's Moon album. So, are you a journalist in Japan?
Q: Yeah, I've been there 25 years.
AC: We played at Crocodile when we were there.
Q: Really?.
AC: Well, I worked for The Stones, right? When they went over on the Bigger Bang Tour, they played Sapporo and all them places and when we had days off, we used to go and play clubs. Keith Richards’ guitar tech, Pierre, he can play guitar, I used to do the sound check for Mick Jagger, in the afternoon… Blondie (Chaplin) got to play with us, Chuck Leavell played with us and we done a night at the Crocodile Club and another club; I can't remember which. I think it was at the Bamboo Bar I used to go when I was there in Tokyo. 25 years goes so quick. I mean, the Bigger Bang Tour, it started 21 years ago today in Boston. Amazing, isn't it?
Q: I didn’t realise it was that long ago…I haven't seen you guys since probably 86…
AC: Whereabouts?
Q: The last time would have been the Hippodrome on the Wednesday nights, when they used to have the Rock Club; Krusher Joule was the DJ. You were a great rock and roll band back then and you’ve still got it.
AC: Thank you. I think rock and roll is a thing that you either have or you haven’t.
Q: There used to be a gang of us that used to go down to the Hippodrome every Wednesday. It was May 24th in either 86 or 87, because it was my birthday. My mates asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday and I said, Dirty Strangers.
AC: Oh, fantastic! I used to like that down there at the Hippodrome. Mind you, it was the 80s. There was a lot of drug culture around at that time. Well, we were all young, you know what I mean? Them times, you should be young. If you try and do them when you're our age, it gets a bit sad but back then, it just seemed like the norm. I think Krusher was the only time we had a number one in his charts. He used to do GLR, didn't he?
Q: That's right, yeah.
AC: We actually had a number one. I miss London, to be honest with you. No, let's put it this way, I miss the London I remember. Not the one that's there now.
Q: Likewise. Thanks Alan. I’ll try and catch you when I’m back next year.
AC: Please do.
A basic drum kit, a singer who also plays keyboards and a keyboard player that also plays guitar is the instrumentation for the second trio of the day, Neon Fields. A simple set-up it maybe but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts from these Bristol lads. They create music that is a mix of Industrial, Prog, experimental sequence-driven numbers that, as you can tell from my description, is hard to put into words. Ed Barrett has the perfect voice for this unlikely combination, melodic and pleading over Luke Russe’s ever changing pounding drum patterns whilst Piers Ward is a modern-day Thomas Dolby, constantly punching buttons, creating sweeping arpeggios and loops that float around the field. There’s a lot coming off the stage from them and it’s all good.
_edited.jpg)
c.jpg)
Neon Fields
Blue Stragglers are a hark back to the late 1960s/early 1970s trios of powerful distorted, echoplex guitar, low tuned drums and whumping bass topped with expressive vocals. ‘– think Cream, James Gang, Jimi Hendrix Experience and you’ll get the idea. Opus’ is a terrific piece right in the spirit of those greats that starts slowly, and builds through a couple of parts into a crescendo that goes seemingly out of control. Then, at tipping point, without warning, everything is dialled back down to the beginning, for the end. Not all their songs are like that. ‘Selfish Scene’, is a much straighter format with a choppy rhythm. It’s highly original and very captivating, a good earworm song to leave the stage and audience with.
_JPG.jpg)
_JPG.jpg)
Blue Stragglers
Not knowing much about Soukous music, I therefore didn’t know much about Kanda Bongo Man, much less that his changes to the arrangements of the genre gave birth to the Kwassa Kwassa dance and no, I didn’t know what the Kwassa Kwassa was until this afternoon either. To be fair, most of the people I talked to in the field were as ignorant as I in all three of those but we were all about to given a short, very enjoyable education in them, from the man and his entourage from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The sun was at its peak when the ensemble walked on and broke into their first uplifting groove. Irresistible would be a good word to use because the music is almost tangible. Standing in the crowd, you get caught up in the rhythm, it’s in your body before you realize, you have been infected and damn, it feels good! They didn’t let-up for the full hour; nobody complained.
_JPG.jpg)
_JPG.jpg)
Kanda Bongo Man
Towards the end of their set, needing a beer, I wandered up to the back of the field and had a brief look in the merch tent to see if there was anyone I good grab a few words from (there wasn’t) and then opted for some liquid refreshment. Pint in hand, I spotted John and Colin, the two A New Day regulars I met last year and we commandeered a haybale for a well-earned sit down. We had bumped into each other briefly in the bar on Friday, huddled together with half of what remained of the audience after the downpour that stopped Stray playing their set but this time it was very different. With the sunshine and Kanda Bongo Man doing his stuff, we got into one of those lovely catch-up chats you have with old friends and before I realized it, the next turn had begun.
I’ve never seen a duo like them. Vince Lee & Sophie Lord have the simplest set-up of the entire weekend, Vince with a black Silvertone 1446 TBK and Sophie with a double bass that combine with Vince’s road-worn voice into something very raw, very special. Vince’s playing combines classic Jazz and Blues; Sophie’s feel slap style brings to mind the great Milt Hinton. Their sound naturally lends itself to do a couple of Tom Wait’s songs but the standouts were a cover of Nick Curran’s ‘Beautiful Girl’ and Louis Jordan’s ‘Blue Light Boogie’ both of which swung like there was no tomorrow. One original, ‘Spanish Turkey, was introduced as “spaghetti surf music” and was indeed, something like Sergio Leone would write as played by Dick Dale. A smoky club sound that works equally as well in a sunny field, I recommend you see them anywhere you can.
_JPG.jpg)
Vince Lee & Sophie Lord
A few words with Vince and Sophie...
(Interview starts with Vince only)
Q: Where did the duo come from?
VL: I've known Sophie for a long time, since she was a teenager and when she was a teenager, she used to come see me play in Plymouth with my band. She was about to go off to university to study as a journalist and I kind of changed her mind. She came to one of our gig and she was like, “I'm not doing this”. She had to go back to her parents and tell them “I'm going to be a bass player”. Damn - it didn't go down too well at first. Anyway, she went and studied up in some music colleges and stuff like that, lived in London for 10 years but we always stayed in touch. I always kept messaging her, how's it going and all that. I know that she's real good friends with Norman Watt-Roy and she messaged me one day and said, I'm coming home. I've had enough of it up here. She booked a month in California to clear her head but came back to Plymouth for a few days and I caught up with her just before she went and she said, “You know, you and I should do something”. Before you knew it, we were in a nightclub.
Q: There's a certain swing that people like Louis Jordan and all those people have and you have it…
VL: We studied it quite a lot and so we've played all sorts of music but I've always played Blues-based stuff and then it touches on all the other things. The Calypso and the Latin stuff and everything like that. So it's all kind of in there.
Q: I see you've got an album out up there in the merch tent.
VL: Me and Sophie haven't gone into the studio right now but we record at home a lot and we record live so every time we do a track, she keeps the audio. So we've got 32 songs, two and a half hours’ worth of material. She just burns them on the CDs.
(Sophie joins)
Q: Fantastic show Sophie. Absolutely loved it.
SL: Cheers.
Q: That's some tattoos you've got there as well.
SL: Yeah. I get them, basically they're like souvenirs when I go to California.
VL: Every time we go she gets another one.
SL: It's like a suitcase, you know. I just slap on a sticker. (smiles)
Q: Your double bass, does it travel ok?
SL: Yeah. Do you know what? Amazingly, it fits in my Fiat 500, which is quite a miracle, to be honest.
Q: How about internationally?
SL: Oh, no. That stays at home.
VL: We'll borrow one. You can't find a double bass or a guitar in America. There's something wrong. (smiles)
Q: Vince, Sophie, thanks. I’ll see you again.
VL and SL: Thank you.
The late afternoon slot at a festival always needs a band to both lift and chill the crowd a bit as the sun and the beverages have settled in to those in the audience who forgot to pace themselves and Jump provide the music needed. Often compared to early Marillion, their guitar driven Prog has more than a hint of commercialism in many of the songs making it is easy on the ears. Their performance is note perfect, the concentration on the musician’s faces intense during playing but there are big smiles across the stage between numbers; they are enjoying this – and so they should. They’ve been going for thirty-six years and although Jump never made it to the big time, they have a loyal following and deserve more acclaim than they have.
_JPG.jpg)
_JPG.jpg)
Jump
Towards the end of Jump’s set, I collar A New Day’s ever smiling MC to talk about working at A New Day.
A few words with Barry Gillingham...
Q: So how did you get roped into all this then?
BG: I started here, on year 2, as a roadie. I'd did that for three years and then there was the change of managers, here and there, so they offered me it I'm the fourth one, and I've left ever since. (laughs) I've been here nine years now.
Q: Do you actually research the band or just go on the fly?
BG: On the fly. We get the times of when they want to go on and come off and I just make sure they're loaded in, ready to go on and come off. It's like a conveyor belt, that's how I work it. It looks easy because we all know what we're doing, I just oversee, I've got two good teams one on each stage.
Q: So as well as MC, you’re the stage manager as well.
BG: Both stages, yeah. We’re one team but I've got two guys, one guy on each stage, sort of like my assistants. I trust them and I just float around like the conductor of the orchestra, just making it all work. (smiles) I couldn't do it without the team though.
Q: Does it ever overrun?
BG: We've had a couple. The trouble is that the band sort of gets on a bit of an adrenaline rush and they don't want to stop. As much as we've told them, you must stick to your time because the second stage are five minutes behind you but everyone usually sticks to their time. We've had a few issues, when we generally may have to ask the next band to cut and set but it isn't really nice. 95% of the time, they'll stick to their time though.
Q: You mentioned yesterday when I was talking to you that the plug gets pulled at 11 o'clock…
BG: It does, yeah, that's the council. It always always finishes on this stage and we overran a couple of times and they sort of said do it again and the licence is in jeopardy so now the sound desk can actually cut the sound. We used to have to rely on the band but now we can do that, we can cut it, just to make sure and we do tell the last band, the headliner, if you run over, that's what's going to happen.
Q: So somewhere, there’s a big on/off switch…
BG: (laughs) Yeah! They've all sort of adhered to it, luckily enough. A lot of them, they know how long they've got, they know what tracks they're doing, they've got a set list. So they generally know. It's only if they get a bit carried away with the solos in between that makes it extend and some of them, they're on like a loop and they can't do anything about it. They can't stop the talk because the next track's already playing.
Q: Good point. Thanks Barry.
BG: Cheers, buddy.
c.jpg)
Barry Gillingham
A New Day Regulars
My word! What a voice! Karnataka’s lead vocalist, Sertari, is effortlessly belting out notes that would shatter cheap earbuds while the band play a blinding set of Prog. Bassist Ian Jones has been the constant throughout the bands existence and has always chosen his musicians wisely through the bands’ thirty years but the current one of Ian, Sertari, Luke Machin (g), Jake Summerfield (d) and Rob Wilshire (k) has to be the best. Opening with ‘Borderline’ they run through a few older songs, saving their last thirty minutes for three songs from their current release Requiem For A Dream. This is where they excelled with ‘All Around The World’, ‘Look To The East’ and ‘Forgiven’. That last track is twelve and a half minutes of operatic Rock that pulls out all the stops and stops a lot of people in their tracks as well. Cool as you like, Sertari says thank you and that “it’s beer o'clock”. Absolutely magnificent.
c.jpg)
Sertari
Karnataka
Ian Jones
_edited.jpg)
A few words with Ian Jones and Sertari...
Q: You did say it was beer o'clock.
S: did. (smiles)
Q: Terrific show Ian.
IJ: Thank you.
Q: How about this lady?
IJ: Fantastic isn’t she?
Q: So, this is for Japan. Apologies if I'm covering old ground, a brief history of the band.
IJ: Formed in Swansea in Wales in 1987 and then, of course, you know, over the years there's been a few line-up changes. We released our last studio album in 2023, Requiem For A Dream, are currently in the middle of a UK tour and then we're back in the studio. We've been writing for a while, but we really want to focus on it now. Over the winter, next spring, back out on tour in a year. So, we're going to take a little break from live, but focus on the next album.
Q: How did you get involved in all this Sertari?
S: Oh, wow. The wonderful world of the web. I saw Ian's private page just on a band website…
IJ: We sort of looked each other up at the same time, didn't we?
S: Yeah, these other websites said who's been looking at your page, so I spotted that Ian was looking for someone, listened to the music, and I thought, wow, absolutely love the style and we just got in contact and the rest is history really, as I say.
Q: When was that?
IJ: 2018. So, it was kind of interesting because we started and thought, let's go out on the road just to bed in as a band and then, of course, COVID hit. We were literally in the rehearsal studio when they announced it; we had a whole 20-day tour lined up. So, we kept on writing. We released a song during lockdown and then as soon as lockdown finished, off we went back on the road.
Q: How many albums have you done?
IJ: Six studio albums and four live albums. Did you know we’ve got a Connecticut Karnataka tribute band in Japan?
Q: No I didn’t! Can you hook me up with them?
IJ: Yeah, of course.
Q: Do you know anything about them, where they're from?
IJ: The guitarist is from Tokyo, came to see us in Germany at Night of the Prog, just a massive Karnataka fan and put this really, seriously good band together called Karl Tanaka (カール田中)
Q: Fantastic. Thanks very, very much for your time.
IJ and S: You're welcome.
When I was growing up, I wanted to go on the Starship Enterprise and experience strange new worlds with Kirk and Spock and all them. Obviously, I never did but this evening, for 60 stardate minutes, we came as close. Henge are off the planet in everyway except literally, a music and visual emprise that initially makes you wonder if your drink has been spiked. All that said, they are thoroughly entertaining and their music is scintillating. It varies a lot. ‘Goldilocks’ is a progressing sequenced pulse-loop that wouldn’t be out of place at a rave while ‘New Planet’ has a massive male choir intro that segues into a gallop with crashing guitars. That’s followed by bouncy keyboard arpeggios, a bit of a metal riff and then back to the choir. At the end, they received a massive applause and promised to return to earth soon.
_JPG.jpg)
c.jpg)
Henge
Martin Turner was due to play this year but his drummer, Tim Brown, had passed away, unexpectedly, just one week ago. Not only was Tim a well-respected and excellent drummer, he was a lovely man as well. Martin, too upset to play, obviously cancelled. He will play here next year but in the meantime, as a replacement for him, step up, the ever reliable, Soho Dukes. They set the stage alight from the off with ‘Excited’ after which, every song adds more fuel to the fire. It’s party time for the suited and booted Londoners and we’re all invited along. The 2nd stage at A New Day has seen some jamborees in it’s time but not one like this. Rammed to the back, the audience never stopped moving. Beer was spilt, hats were lost and the band lapped it up. ‘Holloway’, ‘Bovver Boys’, ‘Sweet Home Camden Town’, the singalongs kept on coming; the energy from the stage, overpowering. They played this one for Tim Brown and Tim would have loved it.
_JPG.jpg)
c.jpg)
Soho Dukes
Gong in 2026 have a rather unusual history in that all their members were chosen by founder Daevid Allen before departing this world in 2015. It becomes even more unusual when you realise that despite the fact that Gong was founded by Daevid in 1969, the band on stage tonight, is the longest established line-up. After a lengthy intro, they open with Dream Of Mine from their most recent album, this year’s Bright Spirit. As expected, it’s a hippy-trippy set of the highest order. They go back to 1974 for ‘Master Builder’ but the majority of the set is from present day and hence we get ‘Rejoice!’ from the first posthumous Daevid album along with ‘My Sawtooth Wake’ and ‘Tiny Galaxies’ from this decade. They end where they started, ‘Stars In Heaven’ from Bright Spirit and as if synchronized, at that moment, two stars seemed to shine a little bit brighter. I named them Tim and Daevid.
c_edited.jpg)
c.jpg)
Gong
* I made that last bit up.