Following the unwelcome intervention of Covid, Darlington’s Last Train Home Festival will make its 2021 return early next month, in a re-sized and re-tooled format.
The music and comedy festival is a very sprightly and eclectic instalment in the North East’s festival calendar, packing eight hours of entertainment across four stages at two of the town’s venues; the Theatre Hullabaloo and the Forum Music Centre. This enables the fest to space their two top-liners at different locations, lending a unique feel.
One of those headliners is Martha Hill, along with her band; a highly justifiable inclusion as Hill’s stock continues to rise. Listeners can now legitimately tune into Radio 1 and happen across the Newcastle-based star who is poised to continue growing a national profile – and this headline experience will feed strongly into that. Fitting support underneath Hill comes from Hurworth’s Jodie Nicholson who happily appears to be on a similar trajectory after a stellar 2021 to date.
Last Train Home’s other headliners will be offbeat Coventry band Feet, bringing their playful, disarming brand of upturned rock and pop. Support here comes from Billingham’s fluorescent, exhilarating noise duo, Mouses. The line-up is otherwise peppered with exciting local acts, most notably Newcastle alt-rockers Pave The Jungle and seismic North Yorkshire rap-rockers Ceiling Demons, a group not easily compared to anyone else.
With an eight-hour comedython as a cornerstone of the festival’s formation and comprising one-quarter of its stage line-up, the Hilarity Bites Comedy Stage is a key component of Last Train Home’s USP. Rob Mulholland will be gracing the fest with his third appearance as host as Paul ‘Silky’ White tops a jam-packed line-up.
Not content with a stacked Saturday alone, the festival will be initiated by a launch event on the preceding Thursday at Darlington’s Head of Steam Museum, headlined by the cello-folk excellence of Ceitidh Mac, one of the finest performers involved here. This limited event, with a special atmosphere and setting, is another unique touch to a festival that has been put together with much care and attention, making maximal use of its location and the regional heritage of the town. Not all festivals note the potential in doing this.
The excitement for the return is palpable. Rob Irish, of locally-affirmed festival curators Tracks, comments: “We’re so hyped to finally see a return to live events, meaning we can fire the engines back up for another Last Train Home Festival”.
For further information, head to tracksdarlington.co.uk.
