Bunch Of Fives: Tracks

Darlington music promoters Tracks are gearing up for 2026’s Last Train Home Festival, taking place on Saturday 5th September. This vibrant music and comedy all‑dayer sprawls across six stages at The Forum, The Hullabaloo and even the Hippodrome’s ornate auditorium, packing in over 40 acts from across the North East and beyond.

The bill is stacked and includes Lucia & The Best Boys, Benefits, Chartreuse, Bitchfinder General, Saint Clair, SwanNek, Lizzie Esau, LEAZES, Labyrinthine Oceans, Risco, Polyvinyl, Callum Pitt, Katie Grace, WENCH, Glad Town Ghost, Anna Karila, The Callows, Central Arcade, Eve Simpson, Claudia, The Larches, Rosie Larada, Tariro, Robyn Banks, Nano Kino, Northern Hospitality, Tom Blackwell, plus a cypher set featuring NE‑O, Eyeconic, SPNI, Dan Swift and DJ Pirata. Comedy comes courtesy of Hilarity Bites, with Gavin Webster, Silky, The Halls of Ridiculous, Devin Gray, Maxine Wade, Dawn Bailey, El Purnell, Anna Thomas and Ray Bradshaw bringing the laughs along with compere Rob Mulholland.

Here, Tracks have a reminisce about five wild and wonderful moments from running Last Train Home Music and Comedy Festival over the last nine years…

Dupla – In 2025 we were excited to welcome the first two international acts to play at Last Train Home Festival. The epic Lawnchair from Germany and the incredible Basque duo Dupla from Spain. Dupla were brought over by Twisterella’s Andy Carr and had played a few gigs on Teesside before coming to our festival, winning over new fans everywhere they played. Their set was packed full of energy and pride in their heritage inspiring people to sing along, join them in a wild dance with the culmination of their set being the sharing of wine and cheese from local producers back in their Basque homeland. The language of music is truly universal and unifying – inspiring stuff!

English Teacher – Almost! In 2023, we were very, very excited to have booked the innovative, genre pushing Leeds band English Teacher. As promoters of a grassroots festival working on a fairly small budget, the aim is always to lock in the booking of a band that we have peered into our magical musical crystal ball and seen that they are going to become the ‘next big thing’. Sometimes this actually pans out and as it so happens it did for English Teacher. The kick in teeth here is that they never actually played our festival as fate had it that two days before the fest, the drummer decided to help out in his dad’s wood shed which resulted in him chopping off a chunk of his finger off! C’est la vie! The awesome Hot Wax who quickly became NME cover stars stepped in and played an epic set, saving the day. We met up with English Teacher at Reeperbahn Festival that year, wished them well and got to enjoy them play an awesome set to a packed out room. They went on to win the Mercury Music Prize, we are still devoted fans to this day

Paul McCartney – In 2018 Paul McCartney teased a new album release called Egypt Station and along with that he did some tiny pop up shows to promote it and cause a media frenzy. As strange fate would have it the teaser art work he released looked pretty much identical to our Tracks logo. Tracks is our non-profit organisation that runs Last Train Home Festival. The wise ones on the internet decided that, that must mean that Macca must be playing a pop up gig at Last Train Home Festival. We appeared on local BBC radio and local press repeatedly to make the clear, bizarre statement ‘Paul McCartney is NOT playing at our festival’ Some people accepted that to be the truth, some people did not, particularly when a week later Paul decided to share another teaser, an image of a train ticket!

Taking Over a Skateboard Shop – In the first year of Last Train Home Festival we tried to bring the music to pop up stages throughout that area of town near the railway station. We took over pubs, a church and even a skateboard shop. The hip-hop stage held in Legacy Skate shop featuring live MC’s performing in the back of the shop may have been the pinnacle of coolness Tracks has ever reached- haha! The shop has now gone but they’re still online and we are still defo cool(!) – have a look www.legacyskatestore.co.uk 

Music On The Roof – We really couldn’t choose from our favourite performances over the various festivals – like choosing between your children! However sometimes there is a moment of magic that leaps out and grows. Around the festival we do various things to promote the event and to try and give some of the artists involved some decent content to support them going forward. Each year we record a couple of live sessions and create decent video footage for the artist. A couple of years back we did this for one Tom A. Smith who’s career is now flying. We use locations that are part of the festival, so for this one we decided (with permission) to film Beatles style, on the roof of Darlington’s fabulous Hippodrome Theatre. The video created of Tom’s performance of The Worst Is Still to Come shows the stunning skyline of the town, the gorgeous early evening sky and captures his voice beautifully. He was wrong like, the best is certainly still to come for this rising rock star.  

Tickets for Last Train Home festival are available here.