Interview Craig Charles
We speak to BBC 6 Music's funk and soul man before his appearance at North Yorkshire's Limetree Festival
Interview: Craig Charles
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Now in its third year, the Limetree Festival is establishing itself as a quality boutique festival. Billed as “groovy, green and serene” and “a return to how festivals used to be”, it even earned a nomination for best new festival at the UK Festival Awards 2008.
This year’s line-up is looking like an especially funky one, with sets from Leeds dance legends Utah Saints, jazz-funksters the James Taylor Quintet, eccentric rock’n’rollers The Blockheads and everyone’s favourite comic-turned-actor-turned-funk-and-soul-DJ Craig Charles.
Charles has worked with many of the bands playing at the festival through his BBC 6 Music Funk & Soul Show, some of whom have been guests on the show. “I’m really looking forward to the festival,” Charles says. “There’s loads of good bands playing there – like Smoove & Turrell, James Taylor Quartet. It should be a great little festival.”
Alongside his successful 6 Music show, his appearances in ‘Coronation Street’ and a brief reprisal of his role as Dave Lister in cult sci-fi comedy ‘Red Dwarf’ (when it came back for an Easter special last year), Charles is a regular on the DJ circuit, playing dates up and down the country – including regular visits to Leeds’ Elbow Room – and a host of festival sets this year.
“I really like playing festival sets,” he says, “but the club sets are great too. I have a different set for each. It’s like at a festival I hate it when bands just play tracks from their new album. Like Bruce Springsteen at Glastonbury last year played his new album and something like four of his old songs, and most people who were watching him won’t be massive Springsteen fans, so they’ll want the hits. It’s like a party, you know, people want to hear big tunes.
“I like to play a mix of songs that everyone knows, songs people might have forgotten about and some rare stuff. So when I DJ live I might play some rare deep funk, and then throw in some funk lollipops, like Smokey Robinson or something.
“At Kendal Calling we went on stage at about 11pm and by the end it felt like everyone at the festival was watching us – there were more people watching from outside the tent than inside it, you know what I mean. We had them dancing through to 3pm, which was amazing.”
As for the future, Charles hopes to be doing something quite special at the 2011 festivals: “I’m hoping to set up a Funk & Soul Show festival stage for next year, taking the Fantasy Funk Band out and getting all the bands that the members come from – like John Turrell from Smoove & Turrell, James Taylor from James Taylor Quintet, Eddie Roberts from The New Mastersounds, and the Haggis Horns. So all those bands play, I DJ between the sets, and then the Fantasy Funk Band headline at the end. It would be a great community stage.”
Charles owes a lot of his success as a DJ to BBC 6 Music, so he must have been pleased when it was announced that the station had been saved from the chop by BBC bosses. “I was delighted when I heard that 6 Music was going to be saved,” he says. “I actually found out while I was on ‘This Morning’ with Hollie and Phil! I was going for an interview and it came up on the screen. It was really good news.
“For me 6 Music is the only BBC music station that really fulfils the station’s output to educate and inform. Things like the commercial stations with their playlists just playing 28 songs on a loop do my head in. Maybe if more commercial stations acted like 6 Music they might do better.
“It was like the BBC were picking on the little kid – 6 Music only costs £7m to run, and just by losing Jonathan Ross the BBC saved £6m.”
Craig Charles plays the Saturday night at the Limetree Festival, 27-29 August, Limetree Farm, Hutts Lane, Grewelthorpe, North Yorkshire, HG4 3DA. Weekend tickets £80 (adv), £90 (otd), junior weekend tickets £25 (adv), £35 (otd), www.limetreefestival.co.uk
Posted on Tuesday 10th August 2010
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