Interview: David Littlefair (Marrapalooza)

Returning for its third edition on 8th and 9th August, Marrapalooza brings over 35 grassroots and DIY acts to Newcastle’s Ouseburn Valley. Hosted across six local venues—The Grove, Cumberland Arms, Tyne Bar, Two By Two Brewery, Little Buildings and Old Coal Yard—the day-long celebration showcases a wide spectrum of artists from across the UK, curated by Portions For Foxes, Flat Four Records, Tyne and Queer, and Future Collaborations.

This year’s lineup includes She Drew The Gun, The Safest Place, Venus Grrrls, Ruth Lyon, Gans, Hayden Thorpe, Native James, Chris Brain, Brown Horse, Mumble Tide, University, Withered Hand, Knives, Cruush, The Dogs, All Girls Arson Club, Jeanie And The White Boys, Mouses, Fast Blood, Wild Spelks, Look Terrified, Akam, Melanie Baker, Peevie and many more.

We spoke with David Littlefair from Portions For Foxes to find out more…

How did Marrapalooza start? 
I’ve been playing in bands since I was sixteen and have played at small festivals all over the country.

My friend Hannah, who was the most incredibly prolific person organising gigs in Newcastle I knew, had been chatting with me about how we could bring something to the Ouseburn Valley that demonstrated how unique Newcastle is as a live music area – there’s no other city in Britain that has anything on a par with Ouseburn Valley. We wanted to do something was ambitious, bringing people from all over the UK’s grassroots and DIY scene to Newcastle. 

What were the inspirations behind its genesis?
I had just played at Til The Fest, in London, organised by my friend Oli, which was a multi-venue underground punk festival, and I had this idea we could do something similar in Newcastle. And now we are in our third year.

What do you look for in an artist when booking for Marrapalooza?
Take our headliner this year, She Drew The Gun. Louisa is an incredible artist and musician but also has a particular ethos that runs through her work and her music that we feel a great affinity with.

We have worked so hard over the years to make an event that is as inclusive as possible. Compared to any other event of the same size it starts at about half the price, we offer a range of tickets to people at different incomes, we host social causes stalls in our venues every year, we aim to bring a lot of performers from outside of the traditional music industry structure and we try to be as varied in terms of people that we book that we can be. 

The main thing though, is that the bands we’ve managed to book this year are absolutely fantastic.

What are your personal highlights at this year’s festival?
I saw Native James earlier this year and they are one of the best live bands I’ve seen in absolutely donkeys. It’s their first time in Newcastle since their MOBO award nomination. I walked in thinking ‘a band that sounds like a UK grime, old school nu metal band isn’t probably my thing anymore’. I was very wrong. They are playing at Old Coal Yard, where there’s an incredible array of amazing punk, hardcore, post punk and heavy rock, like Glasgow’s Soapbox and the Bristol-based saxophone-toting post-punk hardcore Knives.

I also can’t wait to see University, from Crewe, who are on Transgressive Records, and sound a bit like early Fugazi/Los Campesinos, they remind me of American Football meets Danananaykroyd, who might be a bit of a niche reference but if you know it, you’ll know how good they were and how much of a must see this band is. They’re an absolutely genius booking from the brains at Flat Four.

Alongside Hannah and I, Beck from Tyne and Queer has booked Tyne Bar, including Badger who are a band I’ve been meaning to see for absolutely ages.
At Cumberland Arms there’s a mix of some of the most exciting folk, country and singer-songwriter music in the country right now. I think Brown Horse are an absolute must for anyone who is into alt-country and folk like Wilco, The Band, Uncle Tupelo or the like, but that entire stage is amazing too. Chris Brain is an incredibly talented songwriter in the Nick Drake vein, and obviously Hayden Thorpe, who is on his third album since Wild Beasts, is one of the most acclaimed songwriters in Britain.

Our main stage is also just full of must see bands. The Safest Place are probably the most hyped band in the North of England at the moment, and deservedly so when you listen to their music. While Venus Grrrls are fresh from playing Download Festival and are the closest thing our generation will get to seeing Hole at the peak of their powers. Me Lost Me also plays the main stage after a sold out gig at Live Theatre last month, and is the most singularly original artist the North East has produced since Richard Dawson

Aside from the lineup. How else does this year’s festival differ from previous years?
We’re working with different venues, meaning you can stroll a bit more along the river than in previous years. We have much more ambitious aspirations for the festival as a whole. I’d like it to be in eight or nine venues in Ouseburn over a weekend, something people travel from all over the North to come to.

You’re working across multiple venues—what role do those spaces play in shaping the identity of the festival?
We think Ouseburn Valley is unique in the country for having a spread of fantastic venues in a picturesque vista that you can pause and take it any point. There really is nowhere like it. In comparison to other festivals, it forces us to think in terms of 50/100 capacity rooms and cult headlining bands, rather than booking one giant name and running the whole event downstream of that – which is how these things usually work.

With genres spanning grime, folk, punk and psych, what do you think that musical diversity says about the current UK grassroots and DIY scene?
The bottom has completely fell out of the music business and we are trying our best to do our bit to stop them collapse at the small end. When I was a younger man there were absolutely gigantic piles of boring ‘indie’ crap touring the country and making a living, now even the most talented people I know are only scraping by. The music scene in Britain is probably the healthiest it has ever been in terms of creativity but corporate streaming has annihilated the economy. The only people I know who make a living through music do so working for advice organisations on government, not for being creative. I would change so much about the UKs approach to music. Reward creativity and making things, not paper pushing and the attendant managerial industrial complex of middle men.

Massively increase the amount of money given to the Arts Council – our entire country’s arts council budget is less than Germany spends just on Berlin. Create a more philanthropic culture so that the well off are expected to help existing artists rather than buy 500 quid Smiths reissues.

I love the grassroots and DIY scene, it has given my life so much, but after being a part of it for decades you realise things could be so much better and that any culture where art is only for the well off – which is increasingly what Britain is becoming – is a dying culture.

Partnering with Future Collaborations brings accessibility to the fore—how are you building inclusivity into the festival’s future?
I’m so excited by what Autism Able do with Future Collaborations. I spent years working as a disability support worker and I’ve worked on a lot of creative projects alongside people who identify as disabled – after one of my clients introduced me to Drake Music years and years ago. There are so many barriers around disability, neurodiversity and music that Future Collaborations are breaking down – principally the idea that a ‘disability music’ project should be part of a separate world to the mainstream, often with lower expectations. Autism Able are much more ambitious and we are so pleased to have Adam and the team there onboard. I think we do a really good job of platforming artists of colour, or that are LGBT+ identifying or women, but I’m also obsessed with issues of social class, and so in future we hope to work much more directly with organisations associated with class politics and music – brass bands, trade unions and community organisations.

If you are reading this and would like your community organisation or union to host a stall with us, get in touch!

What’s one moment or reaction you’re hoping to see during this year’s Marrapalooza that’ll make all the hard work worth it?
Last year’s event ended with a DIY Ceilidh and a DJ set by DJ Awkward Black Girl. I was dancing around the room under our homemade Marrapalooza banner after another year of seeing incredible bands all day with a load of people I’ve known from the North East music scene for a lifetime and some people I’ve met since through grassroots music and have become great friends with. My friend Hannah, who works so hard to put this together, too. And I found myself thinking ‘what a magical world this is’. 

What an amazing gift it is to be into music.