Stockton Calling music festival is back at the heart of Stockton-on-Tees on Saturday 19th April (over the Easter bank holiday weekend), and it returns with yet another brilliant bill of acts for the seasoned gig and festival-goer, musically adventurous explorers, and casual attendees alike.
The festival is one of numerous annual checkpoints on the North East music calendar, presenting an opportunity to lionise one of the truest stars of the musical gathering: the town itself and the infrastructure comprising its entertainment ecosystem. Despite some of the recently well-publicised perils and pitfalls of running a venue, which apply as much nationally as locally, Stockton boasts a sprawl of spots to be proud of, as evidenced by the hosts of this jamboree. The event incorporates ARC, ARC2, KU, The Georgian Theatre, our own NE Volume Music Bar, The Green Room, The Link, and The Social Room.
The ability to venue-hop, armed with a carefully delineated schedule and a festival ticket covering all bases, across a web of stages with varying sizes and degrees of intimacy – yet all offering up-close live experiences – has long been one of Stockton Calling’s finest selling points. This reflects the evolving face of the town centre on a year-to-year basis since the inauguration of the celebration in 2010.
The ability to attract a splendid blend of legacy acts and exciting upstarts has heralded line-ups of increasing strength in recent years, and it just so happens that this year’s overall headliners at ARC are regional champions Maxïmo Park, still pushing ahead eight studio albums deep with their delicious brand of pop music some twenty years after ‘A Certain Trigger’ announced their arrival. Spotlighting that dichotomy between past and present, Birmingham post-punk poets Big Special will rock The Georgian Theatre in a bravura booking for the weekend.
The totality of the line-up is too considerable to detail in full here, unveiling hosts of talent from far beyond the North East, but any live music lovers roaming the town are guaranteed treats both familiar and unexpected. Another neat feature of the many stages involved is the number of mini-slates and headline slots, with local Stockton Calling mainstay Finn Forster topping KU and hotly-tipped Newcastle musician Lizzie Esau rounding out the night at our own NE Volume Music Bar.
Throw in the likes of Hull indie-rockers The Paddingtons and burgeoning Manchester outfit Picture Parlour into the frame, and you are looking at a thrilling line-up with a legitimate gravitational pull along its top lines.
For further information and tickets, head to stocktoncalling.co.uk.
