I decided to go to Cursus Festival pretty much exclusively on the strength of its lineup. Organised by a group named Fuelled by Cider and featuring a bill of top folk, punk and ska acts (including The Dreadnoughts, Skinny Lister, Imperial Leisure and The Longest Johns), I thought it was not one to be missed.
Located in the heart of Dorset, the festival’s ability to attract top-tier acts belies its small size. Made up of a single cider tent, a handful of stalls, and a marquee main stage, there can’t have been more than a thousand people on site throughout the event, and likely were a lot less than that.
I wasn’t disappointed at this tiny scale, however, more excited.
You see, being this small offers a festival a bunch of advantages. Firstly, while the campsite was down a hill (as is often the case in the West Country), the walk from stage to camp was blissfully short, and I often found myself nipping down to grab a snack or a layer. Second, the single-stage setup made clashes literally impossible, and missing anything very difficult. Third, it allows a sense of camaraderie to build up between all of the attendees faster, and by Sunday, you have many more friends in the crowd than you would at a bigger event.
From a practical point of view, Cursus was very well run. There were plenty of toilets, water was easily available and while limited, the food options catered to practically everyone.
As a cider festival, the bar was obviously cider-focused, featuring ciders brewed by a number of local cideries, including the hosts of the event, Cranborne Chase. All the fermented apple juice I tried was absolutely delicious, and it has honestly put me off the mass market stuff available in the supermarket, which is simply a pale imitation of the real thing (sorry Old Rosie). While options existed for beer and non-drinkers, cider is clearly the focus, and if you can stomach it, I implore you to follow the appley way.
Cursus stands out remarkably in the realm of cider festivals, not just for the drink itself, but also for its exceptional music line-up. Fuelled by Cider has made this possible by putting all its efforts into a single stage and forging relationships with phenomenal artists. As a result, they’ve curated a line-up that essentially lacks any shortcomings.
Due to the M25 being its usual self, I arrived late on Friday, and after dealing with security politely insisting I decant all my glass bottles, I rushed to the stage during the middle of Sinful Maggie. This folk punk act almost instantly brought a smile to my traffic-exhausted face, with their affable arguing on stage about how their songs should be played giving them a sense of authenticity bigger bands desperately attempt to recreate. Adding an accordion to your typical punk lineup really changes the sound in a unique way, and if this appeals to you, Sinful Maggie is worth a listen.
After Sinful Maggie came Gaz Brookfield, accompanied by the fabulous Ben Wain on the fiddle. Gaz has an expressive voice and compelling storytelling lyricism and is a great showman with strong Frank Turner energy. He played a series of funny, poignant, catchy songs, even getting the tired Friday afternoon crowd singing and dancing along.
Up next came the Skimmity Hitchers. Now, Cursus is their own home turf, with much of the band being involved in the festival one way or another, and so to hallow it these boys put on one hell of a gig (two actually, they played a second gig covering for Harmony Asia, who sadly had transport problems on Sunday). Offering countryside ska and Dorset rock and roll rewrites of a bunch of classic songs, the Skimmity Hitchers are a great jumping-off point into the rural rock genre (ed note: can we call it a genre?).
Headlining the Friday was ska fan’s favourite Imperial Leisure. Now, they did not have a good night. Firstly, the festival’s main generator gave out during their sound check, causing the whole site to be plunged into darkness, and if not chaos, mild disorder. This took around an hour to resolve but resolved it was, with solid communication from the Fuelled by Cider team throughout the process.
After this hiccup, the band came on with frontman Dennis sporting a cast on his arm… a cast which rapidly started to unwind. Despite this, and being in obvious pain, Dennis and the band played on, putting out five or six songs, including their biggest hits, in amazingly good form. While it wasn’t quite the show we were hoping for, it was brilliant given the circumstances. Imperial Leisure are clearly conscientious professionals as well as fantastic performers, and I’d strongly recommend seeing or booking them at the first opportunity you get.
Closing the Friday, on a smaller stage in the bar was a band called Dr Beatroot. Playing a mixture of ska, polka, bluegrass and rock and roll, their varied and fun show kept a big crowd out dancing.
On Saturday, the music started with a rumble by Masau’u. Named for a Navajo earth god, the band play muddy, thick blues with a humorous twist, growling vocals and a soaring squealing guitar line. While I thought their show was great, they could have benefitted from being later in the day, and having a more energised crowd, as their music really warrants dancing to.
Following Masau’u were Somethingski. Offering fast-paced Eastern European polka punk, Somethingski were both fun and technically and is definitely an act for Gorgol Bordello fans to catch if you get a chance.
Next, after Somethingski came Nick Parker, whose performance warranted the next showing of Benny Wain on Fiddle. Nick got the audience singing along, and the consensus seemed to be he played perfect Saturday Afternoon music.
Siobhan and the Sunset Haze were up next and didn’t fail to keep the party going. Playing rocky powerful songs with a mesmerising vocal presence, the band immediately grabs your attention and keeps it focused on them. Siobhan’s awkward cute on-stage banter is a nice complement to the rapturous sound the band puts out, and works well to humanise an otherwise almost overwhelming presence. Fun fiddle too.
The Sunset Haze was followed by Samantics, a self-described Eminem wannabe. His lyrics were funny and yet still conscious, emotional and well performed, while his work with loop pedals, creating his entire psydubby sound on stage in front of us, was reminiscent of masters such as Sheeran and Sheldrake.
After Samantic’s emotional performance, the audience was blasted with the hard-core punk sound of Riskee and the Ridicule. Featuring shouty, aggressive vocals, tearing guitars and crashing noise, R and the R’s energetic and emotional performance should serve as a lesson to up and coming punk acts on how to do it properly.
After this blast of punk, the pace changed, and the twin guitars and vocals of Sound of the Siren’s soothed our ears. Using only their voices, footdrums and two guitars, SotS created a wall of sound only matched in class by the great Jack Black and Kyle Gass (ed note: Sound of the Sirens sounds nothing like Tenacious D). Powerful, emotional, and operatic are all words which fail to describe this duo fully, but are the best I can do. They were my surprise highlight of the festival!
After being wowed by the Sound of Sirens, headliners Skinny Lister had a lot to follow. Being Skinny Lister, of course, they smashed it with no trouble.
Offering a mixture of sea shanties, stamp thump anthems, and singalong specials, Skinny Lister are a fantastically reliable live act who always pull out all the stops. Even without Party George they bounced along with their usual energy, setting off the crowd just like Krakatoa. If you somehow still haven’t seen Skinny Lister live yet, just do it. They tour a lot, so it’s often pretty easy to get tickets and it’s a guaranteed solid gig, pretty much whatever your taste in music is.
Finally the day was closed out by the Acrustic Badger Band. You know how I said the Skimmity Hitcher’s were a good diving off point into countryside rock, well, the Acrustic Badger Band are the bottom of the iceberg. Playing west country badger-core on Fiddle and Mandolin, I, a humble east Anglian didn’t quite get it, but the west country crowd went wild, so I figure it’s probably just an acquired taste.
Now, at this point in the review, I feel I need to take a break from music to be a festival nerd and talk about psychogeography (ed note: broadly speaking, the study of how places make you feel). Cursus Festival, out of any event I’ve ever attended, offers the strongest sense of being tied to a geographical place I’ve ever felt. Other festivals, particularly those on the Psy Trance and Psy Dub side of things often boast of being connected to the land, and for the most part, they are, but, damn, its nothing compared to Cursus.
It almost feels like the festival has somehow concentrated the county of Dorset down, like apples to brandy, and stuffed it all in two tents. It kind of feels like a cartoon stereotype of the West Country, and, as an outsider, I think this joyful self parody and sense of rootedness in the landscape is both amazing and admirable.
Now, back to music. While I I like Skinny Lister and Imperial leisure a lot, they were not really the reasons I came to Cursus. Those reasons were concentrated on Sunday.
The day started off with the Boot Hill All Stars. This playful, theatrical ska band boosted all the Sunday morning stragglers’ energy, livening them up for the auditory feast which was to come.
They were followed by Mike Dennis, who’s virtuouso violin meshed with his inventive vocalisations and lyrics to create a soundscape reminiscent of much grander music. This ranged from echoing the triumphant sound of Elgar to the cinematic scores of Zimmer, Shore and Williams.
Completely changing it up from Mr Dennis was Carsick, a three guitars and a drummer ska inspired punk band. With crashing drums and roaring electric instruments, Carsick put on an energy packed performance, and even got their audience to perform the most rare and treasured of mosh pit tricks: the Maypole pit.
After Carsick came Monkey Bizzle. Now, I’ve never seen West Country ska hop before, and I’ll probably never see it again, but I have to say, it’s kind of brilliant. The audience, clearly expecting this kind of thing, went mental. Bangers you can check out include See You Next Tuesday, and My Mates Band.
Once the monkey business had been taken care of, we were treated to Cosmic Ninja. Cosmic Ninja are a female fronted punk (are they punk?) band, with influences seemingly coming from all over modern rock music. Think like Evanescence mixed with Enter Shikari, and add some Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes to the mix and you are about halfway there. It is very fun, and not too serious, but damn good, too.
After Cosmic Ninja had treated us to their unique display, came The Dreadnoughts. Well-known Canadian legends of the folk punk scene, and, full disclosure, probably my favourite band, the Dreadnoughts fuse loud, history-referencing, funny, punk with technically jaw-dropping folk and polka. My eyes were locked on every second of the show, and I sang along every lyric. I probably can’t review this particular gig fairly, so I won’t try, but let me say this, the Dreadnoughts were loads of other people’s main reason for being at Cursus too, and if you like folk and or punk, you should try them out.
To close the festival on the Sunday, Fuelled by Cider had secured none other than the world’s premiere sea shanty crew, The Longest Johns. From coming on to “Pineapple Under the Sea”, to performing the utterly heart-rending “Bones in the Ocean”, this folk group put on a truly world-beating show, which made me laugh, cry and bellow out responses to their shanties. The Longest John’ thrived given the time and space of the headline slot and should be taken very seriously as performers, despite their rise to fame on Tiktok. A particular high note was the end of the show, where they brought on The Dreadnoughts and friends from the audience to join in a performance of the trad banger “Leave Her Johnny”.
Now, to some people, I don’t think Cursus would be impressive. A couple of tents, some stalls, a stage— admittedly it’s a no frills festival. However, to someone with the right taste, it’s essentially perfect as is, the filet mignon of folk punk events, and all it needed was Fuelled by Cider’s great organisation and a great lineup.
Sometimes, simple is indeed best.
If you like the sound of Cursus Festival, Fuelled by Cider will be hosting a second event this summer!
Check out the Outcider lineup here!
Add as a preferred source